There are two sides to the attendance coin. The first side, essentially, deals with what is playing out at the Goa University. A group of 74 students are on protest because their results were withheld. The reason: they did not have 75 per cent attendance as mandated by University rules. On Monday the students gheraoed vice-chancellor Satish Shetye who refused to budge. Despite being verbally harassed by students, one of whom allegedly threatened to commit suicide, the vice-chancellor remained firm. He told the students to go to court because he did not want to undermine the attendance rule. The students received support from Goa Forward, a political party desperately seeking an issue.
The students of Dhempe College of Arts and Science, Miramar were offered a way out by the college. They were asked to attend remedial classes to make up for lost attendance after which they were allowed to appear for the exam. Unfortunately for them, their results were still withheld because the rules do not permit use of remedial classes to make up for absence during the year. As far as the letter of the law goes, the students cannot be allowed to sit for an exam and the vice-chancellor has not done anything wrong in refusing to bow down to the students who went to the extent of demanding the resignation of the college principal. This was totally uncalled for because the college went out of its way to help the students. That is as far as rule of law is concerned. That is how the establishment would prefer to view this issue.
Students tend to look at it from a different standpoint. Firstly, the world over, there is no unanimity on mandatory attendance. While leading universities have done away with compulsory attendance, others prefer to enforce the rule. Some are in the middle. They insist on attendance only for seminars, workshops and presentations. There is a school of thought which says that students at the college level ought to be treated as adults and allowed the liberty to decide whether to attend lectures or not. Then there is the other view which says that mandatory attendance translates into better results at the end of the year. There also is a point of view that if students do not want to attend classes it’s because the lecturers are either boring or because the course content does not translate into real knowledge. This is the other side of the attendance coin.
The mini-revolt by students, backed by their parents and a political party, has also shifted the focus to the ‘compulsory attendance’ law which needs to be debated. For instance, is 75 per cent attendance too high? Should it be reduced to 60 per cent? Are lectures really boring and course content irrelevant? Should mandatory attendance be done away with? Should students with less attendance be permitted to make up through remedial classes? Sometimes the problem is as simple as students from far-off place not being able to reach in time for the first lecture. All these questions are relevant to the issue and students must speak out instead of allowing the establishment to speak down to them. College means different things to students and the establishment. Sometimes it’s a place of learning and sometimes it just a place for students to find themselves or discover what they really want to do. Perhaps some leeway would be more beneficial to the learning and discovery process.
