St. Stephen’s teachers write to principal over autonomy
Fourty one out of 53 permanent teachers of St. Stephen’s College have written a letter to the college principal Prof. John Varghese, demanding to honour the assurances given to the staff council regarding the autonomy issue.
The letter was submitted as a response to an email sent by the principal to all heads of departments regarding the meeting he had taken on March 6 with some of the heads.
“We wish to object strongly to your decision to ask individual faculty members to give in their feedback on the question of autonomy before March 10 in the form of responses to a questionnaire with questions that are either irrelevant or unanswerable on the basis of the almost non-existent information available to us,” said the letter from the teachers. According to the teachers, during the March 3 meeting, “the chair had decided to carry the concerns of the teachers to the ‘governing body’ and urge the members to permit the principal to have discussion with all stakeholders and then decide about submitting application for autonomy to DU/UGC.
“These concerns of the staff council must be first conveyed to the GB before we are asked to give any feedback or to proceed further in any manner with respect to the proposal for autonomous status,” they added. The teachers have requested the principal to convene a meeting of GB and place before it the ratified minutes of the proceedings of the staff council meeting held on March 3.