Gymkhana Review Committee - Why we need to correct ourselves !!!!!!!!!

Ever felt that there is something wrong with the Gymkhana ? Ever felt that your senators do not adequately represent you ? Did you ever feel that the number of activities that freshers are posed with is really too much ? In case you ever felt this, then the GRC Open House is the platform for you to voice your opinions. We shall try to address them and change the things.. It's time to make the changes you wish to see around yourself.

Time and Date: 8:30 PM, 11th April (Thursday)
Venue: L-16

This post is to provide an insight on why such a big review, as proposed, was felt necessary by fellow Senators and me, and why you should attend the Open House tomorrow. In my 1 year tenure as Convener/Chairman of the Students' Senate and my total of nearly 4 years at IIT K, I have noticed several things which, I believe, need to be changed. But changes of such magnitude cannot be brought about by individuals alone and must be gone through with, only after wide consultation with all the stake holders. That's why this Open House is being conducted for Gymkhana Review Committee. I firmly believe that only a combined effort from all the students can help change things for the better.

Too many activities and most of them focused towards the UG 1st year Batch

This was one observation by my fellow Senators and I, who proposed this. We felt that if you take a look at the life of an enthusiastic 1st year student, you will realize, that as soon as the student enters the institute, he/she is literally bombarded with activities, with no free time in the calendar whatsoever to adjust to the new environment and more importantly to understand, when and how to study. But when I ask myself - "Are the activities really too large in number ??", my answer to this is a big NO. What I really believe and want to emphasize here is that it's not the number of activities, but their focus which has gone wrong. All activities are designed to suit mostly the 1st year UG students while the senior UG batches and PG Batches do not find the same interesting or useful enough. The extremely low participation from the UG senior and PG batches, who are perhaps more mature and well informed about how the IIT K campus life works, shows precisely this thing. What I believe is that if we carefully reorganize our activities, spread them uniformly throughout the year and change the focus so as to holistically include the PG students and UG senior students, we might do well. We need your opinions on how to achieve this.

The concern that students do not attend classes due to activities has been expressed by a lot of faculty members at various forums and the what the person in this blog says about this issue also has some truth in it:
http://iitkcampuskikahaniyan.blogspot.in/2013/04/the-institute-intends-to-get-antaragni.html

Hence, your feedback in how we should go about it is extremely important. And if we do not tackle this issue ourselves, we might witness some strict measures from the institute like "Compulsory attendance or ban on student festivals"

Counter Argument - "We teach the freshers to make a choice, something that they must learn in life"

This is a very common argument that people give. Well, I do agree that students must learn to make choices, but then, they must learn to make informed choices and not uninformed choices. I will give you an example.

This story belongs to the time when we used to have 2 mid-semester exams. A 1st year UG student - let's call him Mr. A - used to act remarkably well and was involved in Dramatics activities in early 1st year. Mr. A had also acted in fresher's play immediately after joining the institute and did well enough there. He was posed with a choice in early September immediately after the 1st mid-sem when even the results of the exams had not come. The choice was that if he agreed to practice from 10 pm till late night - 4-5 am and so on, he would get a chance to represent IIT Kanpur in a dramatics competition in Rendezvous( Cultural festival of IITD ). I hope everyone agrees that staying awake till 4 or 5 am potentially means missing almost all morning lectures or attending the lectures while half or fully asleep. Now, my question is "Is the 1st year student who has just spent 1 month in the system, hasn't yet seen the results of mid-sem, hasn't seen what CPI is and what it means, has no idea of what IIT Kanpur academic system expects; informed enough to make this choice." Further, such students are told that "Abe last week mei dhang se padh lo, chill types ikka (A-grade) lag jaata hai, classes jaane ka koi fayda nahi hai.." which brings me to another aspect - that is brainwash.

We seriously need your opinions/guidance/support for stopping what is potentially a brainwash and to adequately reorganize our activities to serve the best interests of the student community.

Brainwash - "Academics is not important" and "even a 6 CPI would fetch you a good enough Job"

This dates back to August this year, when we were constantly hearing about the fact that HECs in UG Halls brainwash the new freshers that "academics is not important, even a 6 would fetch you a good enough job" and then they would give the example of that lone guy in batch where 800 students sat for placement who got a Schlumburger job of 20 lakh package with a 6 CPI. No mention, whatsoever, of those who had CPIs below 7, did not qualify for most of the companies and are still sitting jobless. Though we had taken a good number of actions to stop such nuisance from happening, yet what we observed was that it's not just the HECs, but a lot of 2nd year students who do this as well, without a slight hint of what harm they are causing. They give tips and fundas to the 1st year students like this about jobs and internships about which they themselves know nothing. A deeper investigation into the matter convinced us that most of them are either misguided themselves  and understand the true reality only in their 3rd and 4th year or they are too interested in winning the inter-hall competitions to even care if they are misguiding the freshers whose only source of knowledge and information are these very seniors.

Brainwash part -2 "Abey itna magne ki zaroorat nahi, last week mag k bhi chill type ikka lag jaata hai"

Another case of blatant brain-washing is observed in many club practices. Again, I am forced to give the example of the the 1st year UG student - Mr. A. Remember, he was posed with the choice between lectures and Rendezvous. Well, after choosing to opt for Rendezvous over lectures, Mr. A used to carry his books to his practice place and whenever there was free time in between the practices, he used to open books and start studying. Again, he was made fun of and repeatedly told by seniors, mostly 2nd year students - "Abey itna magne ki zaroorat nahi, aakhiri ek hafte mei mag k bhi chill type ikka (A-grade) lag jaata hai" .

Well, there are 2 points that I would like to raise here. One is that if this were really true, then probably these students telling you these particular things would  have all been 10-pointers themselves. The simple fact that they are not, gives you an insight into how hollow their advice is. Secondly, is getting an A-grade the ultimate objective of our academic life at IIT Kanpur? Are we here to just get good grades, no matter how, in the courses or it is to really understand the content well enough? Well, I believe that unless you study regularly enough, you can't really expect to get a good enough grasp on the course. This holds true for almost all students. Exceptions must be taken as exceptions only and general advice should not be based on exceptions.

There is a strong concern expressed by the faculty members that the academic culture of IIT Kanpur is going down and it is believed that it has a lot to do with this blatant brainwashing. Hence, we need your opinions and your feedback on the matter. Otherwise, the day is not far when the institute will be forced to take corrective steps and my gut feeling is that such steps, no matter taken in what good intention, might be dictatorial and autocratic in nature.

Is Gymkhana truly the representative of students of IIT Kanpur ??

This is one very important question which I was posed with many a time during my tenure as the Chair of the Students' Senate. In the present scenario, what I have observed is a big disconnect of students from the gymkhana and there are many reasons I could see for that. In a survey conducted recently by the students' senate, nearly 70% of the students replied that Senators do not discuss any issues with them and they do not think that Senators adequately represent their views. This is shocking and really calls for soul-searching at a big level. In order to be an effective student body, we must, and I cannot emphasize this more, that we must take measures strong enough to connect the Gymkhana back to the students and adequately represent their views. This may even call for structural changes.

Thus, we seek your opinions on how we can serve you better. The Open House is to give you a platform to voice your opinions on how to go about this holistic review. Unless we all come together and decide for ourselves, we cannot really hope to solve the above mentioned problems. Thus, if you really feel that even an inch of the above mentioned or any other problems need to be tackled, and have any constructive criticism/opinions/feedback to provide, do turn up tomorrow. It's time to bring about the change you wish to see around yourself.
Time and Date: 8:30 PM, 11th April (Thursday)
Venue: L-16