DU day 1: Freshers glad FYUP is gone, others confused
Colleges across DU — Ramjas, Hindu, Miranda, Gargi, Lady Shri Ram, Kamala Nehru and Janki Devi Memorial — held orientation programmes to ease new admissions into the system. But for once, second-years - the FYUP batch — seemed to need help as well. In many colleges, they hadn't received their time-tables in advance and learnt of their new syllabus only from the documents uploaded on the university website. The re-structured curriculum and syllabus for this group was approved in the academic and executive councils of DU only on Saturday and till July 16, colleges didn't know what curriculum had been decided on.
"We'll finish a year early now," says Varsha Kushwaha, Hindi student at Ramjas, "And can start work on our master's degree. Under FYUP, we couldn't concentrate on the main paper." Amit Kumar, BCom (honours) student at Sri Venkateswara, too sees the roll-back as time saved. "It will save one year for us to do more creative things than mugging answers and vomiting them in answer sheets. It's true we now have to catch up fast and finish every thing in two years now but I am fine with it."
"We've had two years docked from our academic careers. The first year was useless and the fourth's been dropped. This has put a lot of pressure on us. There are more laboratory and extra classes being added to our schedule," says Henry Golmes, second-year chemistry student at St. Stephen's College.
"We know the syllabus and course structure but we haven't been given a timetable or a set of readings," says Arushi, in second-year, economics at Miranda House. Reflecting the anxiety some students are facing, she adds, "If they had admitted us into a three-year programme and continued with that, I would've been fine. But this change shouldn't have happened in between." Shazeen Ansari, English student at Hansraj, is in a similar situation. "The confusion started when we were away. Now that we're back, things are still unclear. We don't have a timetable yet and haven't met our teachers," she says.
Miranda House teacher and DU EC-member Abha Dev Habib says that "by and large time-tables have been prepared" and some classes were held but "It will take a day or two to finalize them." Even Hindu's timetables should be in place by Tuesday.
Most first-years, however, seemed glad FYUP is gone. "I prefer three-years," says Suman Kaur who's joined the BSc life sciences class at Ramjas college. The roll-back has meant courses like hers - non-honours programme courses abolished under FYUP - are back in business.
Ragging just isn't the terror it used to be. Freshers were spotted singing atop tables in some college canteens but they didn't seem to mind. At Miranda, the newbies emerged from their orientation clutching pamphlets on the rules; at Daulat Ram, student volunteers questioned anyone seen conversing with the first-years for too long. But no amount of reinforcement of the anti-ragging apparatus could reassure Hema Mehra, who'll be studying mathematics at Ramjas. "The seniors were looking at us," she says, "They are scary."
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