Eden College fracas

The fact that the latest such incident has taken place at Eden College and that the bullies and thugs who have enforced their writ over the campus are women makes one wonder if there is any corner of academia left that has not been infected by politicisation and violence.

The general students had complained for long that rooms in the hostels had been taken over by JCD cadres who were not even enrolled at the college. These cadres have imposed a reign of terror over the halls, extorting money from freshmen students for space and running out of the hostel those who have tried to raise their voice against them. It was to protest such an eviction of some 20 students by the thugs that the demonstrations were initially started.

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The administration which has done nothing to halt the cadres' abuses, compounded the problem by suspending classes and ordering residential students to vacate the hostels even though exams were still on-going and many of the students had nowhere else to go.

Then on Tuesday the JCD cadres, with full complicity of the administration and law enforcement authorities, began to attack the demonstrators, pelting them with brickbats and beating them up indiscriminately, leaving 10 badly injured.

The willful mishandling of the situation by the college authorities has been disgraceful. From the start it has sided with the JCD elements and turned a deaf ear to student complaints. The principal refused to even meet to hear the legitimate demands of the students, and the administration stood silent and watched in satisfaction as the JCD cadres taught the demonstrators a stiff lesson.

This is unacceptable. The college authorities need to be called to account as does the administration which has sat idle while this crisis has spilled out onto the streets. Where has the education ministry been as the drama unfolded?

The end result of the authorities turning a blind eye to the serial abuses of the JCD cadres, due to considerations of political complicity, was the sickening attack on the protesters that in many ways was a new low in campus politicisation and has the public wondering where we have come to as a country.