'Unfortunately, student unity is also the slogan and watchword of university "raggers" who are determined to put entire batches of new entrants en masse through a systematic course of human torture. This is a malicious programme of sustained humiliation supported by a package of lies and distortions that grossly violates the new entrant’s human rights. It is carried out with the sinister aim of pulping the intellect, destroying individuality, and brainwashing every new student into dull conformity with a degraded campus culture and its perverted ideology.'___________________________
by Prof. A. N. I. Ekanayaka
(May 11, Colombo, Sri Lanka Guardian) With new students streaming into some universities at this time of the year the perennial curse of campus torture that best defines the degraded student culture of Sri Lankan universities once again assumes topical significance. Not that it matters to many people these days. Cases like that of the student Varapragash, who was tortured to death some years ago have long since been forgotten in a society hardened by pervasive political deceit, social violence and corruption, where too many academics are preoccupied with lucrative private earnings when they are not busy assiduously amassing the points required for their promotion. My purpose here is not to reiterate much that has already been said and written ad nauseam ( largely to deaf ears ) about campus torture in the past, but to highlight one particular error of thinking that may contribute to the problem.
One reason for the continued existence of "human torture" (ragging) on the campus is the fallacy that students must be "united", come what may. To many university staff and administrators one of the highest values in running the organisation is unity and solidarity amongst students. Some academics talk glibly of campus harmony as if nothing else mattered. Any kind of division or conflict between students is seen as something unseemly, to be discouraged even suppressed at any cost, whatever the underlying issues involved.
This hang up with the notion that students must always be united is partly motivated by the need for university administrators to have a good reputation with higher authorities. All too often in our system the success of a manager is measured in terms of whether there is peace in the institution. It does not matter if it is a false and superficial peace, or whether peace was achieved by the majority crushing the minority into submission, or whether some sacred moral principle or higher value was sacrificed in the process, or whether absence of conflict belies paralysing fear, deep frustrations and unrealised aspirations amongst a section of the community. All that is of secondary importance. What matters is that conflict among students, or between students and the authorities spells trouble for administrators and is bad for the government. The good administrator is above all the person who has succeeded in avoiding conflict in the faculties and maintained a veneer of harmony however average his/her achievements in other respects.
Apart from the pragmatic need to meet this criterion of success, it is possible that the obsession with student unity also reflects a lack of philosophical depth and a simplistic attitude amongst academic staff, not unlike the old fashioned schoolmaster who, whenever a fight broke out between two students, blindly slapped them both, without bothering to distinguish the sadistic class bully from his innocent victim who, having taken enough, was finally having the courage to hit back.
Unfortunately, student unity is also the slogan and watchword of university "raggers" who are determined to put entire batches of new entrants en masse through a systematic course of human torture. This is a malicious programme of sustained humiliation supported by a package of lies and distortions that grossly violates the new entrant’s human rights. It is carried out with the sinister aim of pulping the intellect, destroying individuality, and brainwashing every new student into dull conformity with a degraded campus culture and its perverted ideology. The insistence that each and every student without exception must submit to this degradation is supported by the argument that in so doing there will be a "togetherness" uniting the students as one body.
High principled idealistic students who have the courage of their convictions to resist ragging (‘anti-raggers’) are, therefore, labelled as troublesome dissidents, subversives who are fomenting divisions in the student body. When the occasional flare up occurs following the sustained intimidation and provocation of anti – raggers (who are basically decent and non violent) by raggers (who are basically thugs and rowdies ) university staff and administrators look upon such incidents with evenhanded disapproval as mob violence caused by two warring student groups who are disturbing the peace.
It can, therefore, be seen that when some academic staff, and administrators emphasise the importance of student unity, they begin to share with raggers a wholly fallacious sense of values, which only helps to perpetuate the degenerate culture of campus torture. The most tragic outcome of this is that staff in some faculties begin to have an unhealthy and distorted view of anti–rag groups seeing them as trouble makers who are responsible for conflict amongst students. This, of course, is grossly unfair and irrational. People who have some sense of the ethos of a university (and I wonder how many do nowadays) would recognise that in bravely standing up for their rights and principles and refusing to be brainwashed anti-raggers embody those qualities of mind, independence, and rationality that are the very quintessence of academe. The conflict they engender is the "holy conflict" that is inevitable wherever good is unbowed in the face of evil, wherever the conscience forbids the sacrifice of principle preferring instead to suffer persecution for the sake of righteousness.
The alternative is the sham peace where evil predominates when in the words of Edmund Burke "good men are silent".
Civilisation would have been poorer if the truly great personalities of history whether Mandela, Gandhi, or Martin Luther King, or the poor Nepalese who got shot standing up to an autocratic monarch, or the young Chinese who were massacred in Tienemen square for the sake of democracy had not in good faith provoked conflict in the short term so that in the long term there might be a durable peace with justice. In an age of declining academic standards where most university students qualify for admission on the basis of marks rather than motivation, the character and intellectual emancipation of anti-rag groups are an example to other students. The universities have a duty to recognise, appreciate, encourage and protect them.
Strategies to generate a progressive increase in the number of committed anti– rag students with each successive batch, may do more to impart a new spirit of intellectual authenticity, quality of mind and freedom of conscience in our graduates than the mountains of paper that testify to curriculum developments and research taking place in our universities these days. But before that academics and administrators will need to abandon the current inane yearning for a phony state of harmony between students, and instead get their priorities straight by asking themselves ‘what is the highest value that ought to characterise a University?’
- Sri Lanka Guardian
(May 11, Colombo, Sri Lanka Guardian) With new students streaming into some universities at this time of the year the perennial curse of campus torture that best defines the degraded student culture of Sri Lankan universities once again assumes topical significance. Not that it matters to many people these days. Cases like that of the student Varapragash, who was tortured to death some years ago have long since been forgotten in a society hardened by pervasive political deceit, social violence and corruption, where too many academics are preoccupied with lucrative private earnings when they are not busy assiduously amassing the points required for their promotion. My purpose here is not to reiterate much that has already been said and written ad nauseam ( largely to deaf ears ) about campus torture in the past, but to highlight one particular error of thinking that may contribute to the problem.
One reason for the continued existence of "human torture" (ragging) on the campus is the fallacy that students must be "united", come what may. To many university staff and administrators one of the highest values in running the organisation is unity and solidarity amongst students. Some academics talk glibly of campus harmony as if nothing else mattered. Any kind of division or conflict between students is seen as something unseemly, to be discouraged even suppressed at any cost, whatever the underlying issues involved.
This hang up with the notion that students must always be united is partly motivated by the need for university administrators to have a good reputation with higher authorities. All too often in our system the success of a manager is measured in terms of whether there is peace in the institution. It does not matter if it is a false and superficial peace, or whether peace was achieved by the majority crushing the minority into submission, or whether some sacred moral principle or higher value was sacrificed in the process, or whether absence of conflict belies paralysing fear, deep frustrations and unrealised aspirations amongst a section of the community. All that is of secondary importance. What matters is that conflict among students, or between students and the authorities spells trouble for administrators and is bad for the government. The good administrator is above all the person who has succeeded in avoiding conflict in the faculties and maintained a veneer of harmony however average his/her achievements in other respects.
Apart from the pragmatic need to meet this criterion of success, it is possible that the obsession with student unity also reflects a lack of philosophical depth and a simplistic attitude amongst academic staff, not unlike the old fashioned schoolmaster who, whenever a fight broke out between two students, blindly slapped them both, without bothering to distinguish the sadistic class bully from his innocent victim who, having taken enough, was finally having the courage to hit back.
Unfortunately, student unity is also the slogan and watchword of university "raggers" who are determined to put entire batches of new entrants en masse through a systematic course of human torture. This is a malicious programme of sustained humiliation supported by a package of lies and distortions that grossly violates the new entrant’s human rights. It is carried out with the sinister aim of pulping the intellect, destroying individuality, and brainwashing every new student into dull conformity with a degraded campus culture and its perverted ideology. The insistence that each and every student without exception must submit to this degradation is supported by the argument that in so doing there will be a "togetherness" uniting the students as one body.
High principled idealistic students who have the courage of their convictions to resist ragging (‘anti-raggers’) are, therefore, labelled as troublesome dissidents, subversives who are fomenting divisions in the student body. When the occasional flare up occurs following the sustained intimidation and provocation of anti – raggers (who are basically decent and non violent) by raggers (who are basically thugs and rowdies ) university staff and administrators look upon such incidents with evenhanded disapproval as mob violence caused by two warring student groups who are disturbing the peace.
It can, therefore, be seen that when some academic staff, and administrators emphasise the importance of student unity, they begin to share with raggers a wholly fallacious sense of values, which only helps to perpetuate the degenerate culture of campus torture. The most tragic outcome of this is that staff in some faculties begin to have an unhealthy and distorted view of anti–rag groups seeing them as trouble makers who are responsible for conflict amongst students. This, of course, is grossly unfair and irrational. People who have some sense of the ethos of a university (and I wonder how many do nowadays) would recognise that in bravely standing up for their rights and principles and refusing to be brainwashed anti-raggers embody those qualities of mind, independence, and rationality that are the very quintessence of academe. The conflict they engender is the "holy conflict" that is inevitable wherever good is unbowed in the face of evil, wherever the conscience forbids the sacrifice of principle preferring instead to suffer persecution for the sake of righteousness.
The alternative is the sham peace where evil predominates when in the words of Edmund Burke "good men are silent".
Civilisation would have been poorer if the truly great personalities of history whether Mandela, Gandhi, or Martin Luther King, or the poor Nepalese who got shot standing up to an autocratic monarch, or the young Chinese who were massacred in Tienemen square for the sake of democracy had not in good faith provoked conflict in the short term so that in the long term there might be a durable peace with justice. In an age of declining academic standards where most university students qualify for admission on the basis of marks rather than motivation, the character and intellectual emancipation of anti-rag groups are an example to other students. The universities have a duty to recognise, appreciate, encourage and protect them.
Strategies to generate a progressive increase in the number of committed anti– rag students with each successive batch, may do more to impart a new spirit of intellectual authenticity, quality of mind and freedom of conscience in our graduates than the mountains of paper that testify to curriculum developments and research taking place in our universities these days. But before that academics and administrators will need to abandon the current inane yearning for a phony state of harmony between students, and instead get their priorities straight by asking themselves ‘what is the highest value that ought to characterise a University?’
- Sri Lanka Guardian
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Highly commendable writing by Prof Ekanayake. However, his comments would certainly rouse the ire of many of our present dons as the cap would fit them perfectly.
What is presented in this article is so very true. Let me add a few of my own observations for the sake of completeness. I am no professor but just a retired teacher who prides herself in being one of the old school as well as the mother of two children, a daughter who had her university education in Canada and post-grad studies at Cambridge University and a son who had his university education in Sri Lanka and post-grad studies thereafter at the Univ of Illinois at U-C. So I possess a lot of experiences by way of feedback I received from them in different seats of learning over a period of almost 20years.
Ragging is alien to the universities in USA and Canada. Students know they come there to learn and not waste time. The freshmen do not need any "nannying" from the seniors as their welfare is looked after by the authorities. There are police posts on all these campuses and law enforcement is a priority.
The prevalent Sri Lankan university students' myth about justifying ragging is that it is a way to get to know the seniors and building up that "sham unity" Professor Ekanayake talks about. As I found out from the freshmen themselves, once the ragging period is over and if they have been " good and obedient" not complained to the authorities (that is if these newcomers were fortunate enough to survive the inhuman torture without broken bones and battered minds) then they are 'looked after' 'taken care of' by the aiyala and akkala, coached in their studies (with pilfered notes and practical reports for sure!)so they would pass their examinations. These distorted ideas are sytematically instilled into the minds of the freshmen as soon as they step into the portals of the university. This is what makes them grin and bear the humiliating acts of ragging and torture silently. Thus the vicious cycle has gone on over the years.
Politics should not be allowed at all in universities. To be a politico today one needs no education least of all a university education. University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign has 3 different Police posts within campus, Urbana police, Champaign police, and the UIUC University police.
We in our day over 4 decades ago, saw no politics in our universities and we did not need any nannying services of our seniors. We could ask for assistance from the authorities and get our academic difficulites clarified and sorted out by our professors who were always there for us.
This farcical idea of 'mothering' the juniors by the seniors must be eradicated by whatever means and for that the dons should take responsibilty to take the newcomers under their wing right from the beginning. What generally happens now is that the present dons turn a blind eye and a deaf ear and let the freshmen sort out the problems themselves in whatever way they could.
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