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layout: post
title: "The Curse Of Being In Meta"
date: 2011-11-22 06:14
comments: true
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Our institute takes a rather ambiguous stance on the attendance shortage rule. While technically, a student should be forced to repeat a course if his attendance falls below that magical 75% mark, this dictum seldom comes into play owing to general leniency shown by professors and departments. Unless the figure under consideration has reached unspeakably abysmal levels, in which case the student probably knows what’s coming. Regardless of the course or professor or department in question, students generally breathe easy if they are somewhere near the 65 to 70% mark.

This myth was shattered in one fell swoop by the pride of the Metallurgy department on Friday the 18th of November, when a certain senior professor decided to unleash his full fury upon unsuspecting final year students who had naught on their minds but graduating out of this institute in 6 months time without any major incident. That was not to be, for they are being debarred from sitting for one particular exam because their attendance is below some limit the prof dreamed up in his spare time.

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The protocol to be followed in such situations, regardless of the course or department or professor in question, is to go the professor and request him to reconsider before it’s too late. This happens all the time and it works all the time too. Any prof in his right mind would be loath to <em>fail</em> an academically excellent student just because he missed a class or two more than what is lawfully permitted. And no prof with a modicum of sense would play a cruel joke like dishing out year backs to final year students right on the cusp of placements/higher studies. Apparently, someone was out to change things around in the Meta department this time.

Students with hitherto unblemished records suddenly found their names on the attendance shortage list, which came to their notice late evening on the last working day before the end-term examination. Naturally, they rushed to the professor’s office to catch him just as he’d be leaving for home. Did it come as a surprise that their pleas fell on deaf ears? Frankly speaking, yes. Pity the fools who thought not ruining the students’ future would be anywhere on the minds of the teaching community.

So they have been told at the eleventh hour, when nothing can be done to redeem the situation, that they cannot sit for the exam with everybody else this year and they’ll have to repeat the course next year. Will this affect their placements? Will this show in their applications to universities for higher education (which all of them no doubt are worthy of)? I don’t know. Did the professor think about that for a moment before sending the list out to the Acad Section without ever caring to put up a warning sign in the department? I think we all know the answer to that. There is also the small matter that no other department is giving attendance backs to final year students.

Whilst it can be argued that some fault does lie with the students for not showing due seriousness towards a course they opted for and taking the professors’ forbearance for granted, this severe punishment can also be seen as a case of making an example out of some people to prove a point to everyone. It is no laughing matter that half the insti could end up cooling its heels during the exams were the same rule applicable for all courses in all departments. 

Very selfishly, my reaction (like everybody else’s) at seeing the attendance shortage list was one of massive relief. I have no idea what I would have done if made to face the possibility of staying back in R for one more year to clear a solitary course. It is a sad fact of life, but sympathy for the misery of others is always mingled with the small comfort of not being on the same boat.

This is not a senseless rant meant to sully the reputation of my department by highlighting one isolated incident. Neither is professors’ insensitivity a newfangled development borne out of sheer boredom and getting high on too many Cuban cigars. The plight of students is the same everywhere and at all times. R is no longer the university where the entire student citizenry would have risen up in arms to fight against any atrocity. We are but helpless puppets in the hands of the higher powers who are living in some dystopian paradise of their own. They sure do know a thing or two about breaking a man’s spirit right when it is at its lowest ebb. 

<strong>From</strong>
An Anonymous Crusader
(A Graduate of Batch 2012, now pursuing his PhD)
