QR you? A cooler way to enter DU fests now

We saw a footfall of over 10,000 per day, and in such a crowd, it would have otherwise been very tough to track who is actually a student. VIPIN KUMAR, Student-member, organising committee of Sri Venkateswara College’s fest

Remember flashing your college ID to gain entry to a Delhi University college fest? Like with most things, technological advancement is entering campus life in this aspect, too. For instance, some colleges now need students, vendors, teachers and even judges and other guests to register using their Aadhaar. Once they do that, a unique QR code is generated to enable one-time entry access.

“We were the first college to use QR codes for entry. The e-ticket was generated by a committee of faculty members,” says Divya Singh, convenor for Students’ Union

Advisory and associate professor in the Botany department at Maitreyi College, where those seeking entry had to fill in their name, contact number, email ID and Aadhaar number, as well as a PDF copy of their ID card.

It also helps create a credible database of all those entering the campus. “We saw a footfall of over ten thousand per day, and in such a crowd, it would have been impossible to track who is actually a student,” says Vipin Kumar, member of the organising committee of Nexus ’24, the Sri Venkateswara College fest. The BSc (Hons) Mathematics student adds, “It helped us prevent security breaches, and non-students from creating any issues,” adds Kumar.

For the Miranda House fest, the move even helped raise sponsorship. “We asked everyone to register on a community-based app that generates a unique QR code for everyone and scanning that would get them entry,” says Jyotsna Singh, a BA (Hons) English student and central counsellor of Miranda House students’ union. “This app works on the basis of anonymity — except in the case of registration, wherein we required college and government ID proof. For every code generated, we raised ₹40 as sponsorship! It’s a win-win for everybody,” she adds.