St Stephen’s teachers write to principal, demand assurance on autonomy

NEW DELHI: In a response to an email of the Principal of St. Stephen’s college to the heads of all departments, 41 out of 53 permanent teachers have written a letter to the principal demanding to honour the assurances given to the staff council regarding the autonomy issue.

The Governing Body meeting of the College held on February 25 decided to proceed with the proposal seeking autonomy for the institution. The current letter sent by the teachers is regarding the meeting that the principal, John Varghese had on March 6.

The letter described the meeting as ‘grossly inadequate notice’. Also, it stated that notice was not sent to several heads owing to which they could not attend the meeting.

“We strongly object your decision to ask individual faculty members to give in their feedback on the question of autonomy before March 10 2017, in the form of responses to a questionnaire which is either irrelevant or unanswerable on the basis of the almost non-existent information available to us,” read the letter sent by the teachers.

According to the teachers, during the meeting held on March 3, it was decided that the concerned teachers would be carried to the Governing Body (GB) and these concerns of the Staff Council must be first conveyed to the Governing Body before they were asked to give any feedback or to proceed further in any manner with respect to the proposal for autonomous status of the institution.

Further, the teachers requested the principal to convene a meeting of the GB and place before the ratified minutes of the proceedings of the Staff Council meeting held on March 3.