Amid the lockdown, the University of Delhi had announced the results of the students in their BA English (Honours) course. The result that was announced at a completely unexpected time had left a lot of students shocked. The reason? Many of them had scored grade points lower than what they had anticipated. That wasn't all of it. Many of them scored zero credit points in their core subjects, which the students say is an otherwise impossible occurence.
Mark sheets of first-year students that Edexlive had accessed show that some of them, apart from scoring zero credit points, also scored zero marks in their core subjects. A few students also had a Semester Grade Point Assessment (SGPA) of 0. "Scoring zero in a core subject is logically near to impossible," says Noel Benny, a student of Zakir Husain Delhi College.
The Delhi University Teachers' Association (DUTA) had boycotted the answer sheet evaluation at that time, protesting against the university not paying salaries to the faculty of some colleges affiliated to it. This too had raised questions among students. Even though most of the teachers refrained from commenting on the issue, an English faculty member told us on condition of anonymity that students scoring zero is impossible and it could have been a technical glitch. He added that the students can always apply for revaluation.
The issue with revaluation
The last day for the students to apply for revaluation was Tuesday. However, if sources are to be believed, most of the students who raised concerns did not consider this option. Some of the students who had earlier spoken to us said that the university charges Rs 1,000 per student per subject for revaluation. "The cost of the revaluation is really high. It is difficult for most of us to pay that money, especially during the lockdown," said a student.
A group of students has now released a statement, raising concerns about the revaluation system in the university. According to the statement, one of the rules says, "If the award of the revaluator varies from the original award by more than 10 per cent, the answer script will be examined by a second revaluator and average of the two nearest awards out of the three shall be taken as final." The students are critical of it stating that the rules are incompetent. They also called it a 'time-consuming process'.
A few others could not apply for revaluation, owing to poor network connectivity.
Raising voices
The lockdown is no time for agitation. However, the students had protested the grading procedure through a Twitter storm a few days ago. They also demanded that the university conduct a fresh evaluation of answer sheets. Various student political organisations including SFI and AISA had also come out in their support. "However, the DUTA did not encourage our struggle at all. We did not receive any positive response from them. This is quite disheartening," says a student. The students also started a campaign by sending mass emails to the university's examination department.
