A day after the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) permitted colleges and universities to hold examinations for final year exams, the hashtag #StudentsLivesMatters is trending on micro-blogging site Twitter. Students and teachers of universities across the country have denounced the MHA's decision to compulsorily hold exams for all final year students by the end of September.
The MHA, in a letter to the Union Higher Education Secretary, said that final term examinations are to be compulsorily conducted as per the UGC Guidelines on Examinations and Academic Calendar for the Universities and as per the Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) approved by the Union Ministry of Health & Family Welfare. Delhi University, which had announced an online Open Book Examination for the final year students, has also announced that those who are unable to connect to the server on the date of the exam or even upload their answer scripts will be given an opportunity for an offline test in September.
But students and teachers are not happy with that either. "India is the third-worst COVID-19 affected country. Things might deteriorate further by September. Both offline and online exams remain a big no in these difficult times. It is really painful to see MHA-MHRD-UGC-DU not caring for students' welfare," tweeted Dr Mithuraaj Dhusiya, who is an Assistant Professor of English at Hansraj College.
Pallavi Raj, a postgraduate student of Political Science at the Kirorimal College, Delhi University also started the hashtag trend #BoycottDUExams. "The concept of open book examinations is extremely exclusionary and discriminatory to start with. The Delhi University students union has failed us, it no longer represents us," she said after the ABVP-led DU Students' Union supported the UGC notice. "In this pandemic, when students expected some sort of relief from the DU administration, they have mentally tortured thousands of students," she added.
Not just students and faculty from DU but the Maharashtra Students' Union too tweeted with the hashtag #StudentsLivesMatters. "We will fight back. We will stand for students by any means. We appeal to all students to raise your voice against injustice," they tweeted. #Cancel_Exam2020 is also one of the top trends on Twitter India today. Tweeting with the hashtag, DU Teachers' Association (DUTA) Treasurer Dr Abha Dev Habib also alleged that the ABVP and the government are working in tandem to make the OBE a success. "Who inspired whom? There is a stark similarity between UGC guidelines and ABVP press release issues a few hours before the UGC's revised guidelines," said her tweet.
