Rajshahi University disorder

Recruitment rules were flouted by the university authorities while filling in a very large number of vacancies, an action that has a stricture delivered on it by the High Court. When lines are arbitrarily crossed to allow partisan consideration in enrollment, no wonder when the system of recruitment collapses, the general state of discipline and order that one normally associates with the highest seat of learning crumbles, too. And that was what exactly we witnessed happening at Rajshahi University.

But we ask, how dare does anyone raise hands on the teachers and staff of the university? Will it be wrong to suggest that such actions cannot be possible unless the perpetrators have backings of powers that be? Reportedly, local office bearers of one of the major ruling coalition partners led the perpetrators in the wanton vandalism and thuggery.

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We also find the demand for the confirmation of the appointment of the several hundred, employed in a patently irregular manner, most reprehensible. This, when the case is sub judice can point to only one motivation of the perpetrators, which is to get an illegal action legalised.

No doubt the institution has been denigrated. And both sides must take the blame and be held to account for it. We hope that not only those who carried out the ransacking of the university building and the assault on the teachers must be brought to book including those who instigated them but also those in the university administration who had subverted the system by recruitment through the backdoor.

All this is not expected from the highest seat of learning. While we need to strengthen the institutional capacities, we seem to be ruining whatever little we have by irresponsible behaviour.