Wednesday, Jun 17, 2009
Chennai: Larger universities and colleges across the country could soon be asked to establish a campus police force to check ragging, according to R.K. Raghavan, chairman of the Monitoring Committee for the Prevention of Ragging.

Addressing a meeting of the Rotary Club of Madras here on Tuesday, Mr. Raghavan, who is also former CBI director, said that he would suggest the move. “It’s a good idea to make it mandatory for every college or university of a certain size to have a campus police.”

He pointed out that all American universities were required to have such a campus police force to protect their students. A team of uniformed men patrol the university grounds, offering security to students, especially late at night.

“In the case of any incident, they will be quick to the spot, and then they can also tip off the local police,” he said. If a student had to arrive on the campus late at night or walk from one building to another – say, the library to the hostel – the campus police could be asked to escort them.

Mr. Raghavan felt that it would be the responsibility of the college management to set up and finance such a force.

“They are collecting so much money from students. Surely they can afford to provide adequate security,” he said. The management also needed to beef up basic security and ensure that a dedicated warden was provided for every hostel, preferably a retired police or Army officer, he said. “Today, many institutions don’t have a hostel near the college [academic] building…It is in another part of the city so they think they can drop all responsibility. We have disabused them of that idea.”

After the Supreme Court ordered that the educational regulators needed to take action against college managements, an engineering college in Andhra Pradesh had come under the scanner, he said. “A show-cause notice has been served on why grants should not be withdrawn.”

Derecognition was another threat available to regulators, he said, saying that managements would not take action unless pressured to do so.

Major recommendation
One major recommendation of the Raghavan Committee that has not been implemented yet was to allow first year students to arrive in college a month before their seniors. If they got used to the campus and created a bond among themselves, they would be able to stand up to their seniors if ragged, he said.

Police officers also needed to be made aware of the anti-ragging legislation in the States where it existed.

“Here in Tamil Nadu we have it, but few police officers know about it. When I was a police officer here, I didn’t know of it,” he said.