IIT-B ALUMNA SEEK ACTION AGAINST PROF OF KHARAGPUR CAMPUS
MUMBAI: A group of alumna members of Indian Institute of Technology-bombay (IIT-B) on Thursday have urged the director of Iit-kharagpur (IITKGP) to take action against a professor who was allegedly seen verbally abusing a preparatory class for students belonging to the scheduled castes (SC) and scheduled tribes (ST) categories and those with physical disabilities in a video.
In a letter to IIT-KGP’S director Virendra Kumar Tewari, the alumna said the video, that had emerged four days ago, has “horrified” them. They demanded that Tewari take immediate action against the violation of classroom ethics, create a safe space for students to place their grievances and attend to them on an urgent basis with immediate action. Despite repeated attempts, Tewari remained unavailable for a comment.
Videos of Seema Singh, an associate professor from IITKGP’S humanities and social sciences department emerged on social media on Sunday where she can be heard repeatedly hurling abuses at students reportedly attending online preparatory classes meant for students from SC, ST categories and those with physical disabilities. The recordings, which are under the institute’s review, were posted anonymously on IITKGP’S confessions page, an informal group of students on social media.
The 25 IIT-B alumna include Anupama Krishnamurthy (class of 1988), researcher at French Institute Pondicherry; Shaibani Azam (class of 1986), professor at Jamia Millia University; Enakshi Bhattacharya (class of 1980), professor at Iit-madras; Deepti Pradhan (class of 1986); associate director of research at Yale University and Chayanika Shah (class of 1986), retired lecturer, KJ Somaiya College of Science and Commerce.
“We were students at a time when the gender ratio in IIT-B was less than 5%. As minority students on campus, we have experienced many sexist comments from teachers and recognise today how their actions and statements made an adverse impact on our learning environment. We, hence, speak from some personal experience of discrimination at Iit-campuses. We were even then aware of the ways in which those who came from marginalised caste backgrounds, were not English speaking, or were from smaller towns were discriminated against,” wrote the group.
The women had also participated in a strike in 1980 when four students had raised their voice against IIT-B’S order cancelling their admissions on the grounds that they had a backlog in courses and were not able to cope with the undergraduate programme. The unprecedented strike had forced the institute to a grinding halt for almost 40 days.
Institutions are not fit to look after diverse students in their present state, said Shah. “While a complete overhaul of the education system is ideal, there are things institutes can do immediately. They must set up anti-discrimination cells, train teachers on how to treat diversity and reduce the emphasis on [academic] performance,” she said.
Singh has apologised to students for her behaviour in an email. Many student and alumni bodies, however, have started online petitions demanding action against her and the creation of an SC/ ST cell at IITS.