Editorial: Infantilizing Youth with Our Arrogance

A 25-year-old MA student, already ‘adult’ enough in the 2009 assembly elections to participate in the process to elect a government for Sikkim, was recently served a notice by the Sikkim University. This notice, signed by the Registrar, irrespective of what the student in being officially charged with, was clearly because of a letter he had written [published in this newspaper] commenting on how the students will dearly miss some of the teachers passed over in the regularisation process. It is offensive enough that an institution of higher learning should dredge the barrel so arrogantly when it comes to accommodating voices that are not sycophantically celebratory. It goes without saying that the decision to harass a student because he holds an opinion different from the university administration is reprehensible. Those who seek to justify the SU administration’s actions on the grounds that it was required to “maintain discipline” or under some clause of the elaborate “Act of Parliament” which instituted the University, are either trying to cover up for their own lack of spine for having failed to protest the hounding of students, or they just don’t care. It must be borne in mind that at worst, the students being charged have complained and questioned, not levelled allegations. Now, with their teachers and even fellow students having distanced themselves from the situation, one hopes that other groups will speak up for them. Pre-empting comments of “politicisation” which might follow when some groups do speak up, as the Students Union of Sikkim has done, one is forced to point out that when agencies and representative groups like the concerned teachers and the civil society prefer to hold their silence and do not engage, the space is bound to be occupied by other groups, even those inflected with ‘politics’.
But this is not just about the disciplinary action being taken, it’s more importantly about how it is being done. No one denies the university its right to take administrative action whether against teacher or students, but when it comes to dealing with students, one expects better educated minds to rise above stereotypes and engage students as individuals, not try and browbeat them by talking down to them. We already have enough of that with politicians sermonising about proper conduct expected of students. And the University has stepped down several more rungs by behaving like a gaggle of sulking toddlers and threatening to “tell” the parents. This is where the reference to the age of one of the students made earlier comes in. This 25 year old has been directed to bring his parents to meet the Registrar to discuss his “indiscipline”. The allegation of “indiscipline” is in itself in conflict with everything a University should stand for and an obvious overreaching of whatever powers are invested in the various positions at the institution. It is bad enough if the officers in the university are only shadow-boxing, but extremely worrying if they themselves believe that parents need to be brought in to “discipline” a 25-year-old or even be tattled to. We are already a country of people who see nothing wrong in over-parenting. When our children finally go to college, it as much to learn more as it is to finally grow up. In Sikkim, however, the process of infantilizing them continues with the imposition of a dress code [an actual uniform in college] and a course schedule structured to keep them too occupied to become their own persons. Now, the arrogance does not go away in university either. A person old enough to vote, decide whether he wants to drink and smoke, marry and take any other life-changing decision on his own is infantilized with orders to bring in his parents to discuss his conduct. Even cops, seldom credited with fine sensibilities, when they find a 25 year old on the wrong end of the law, do not ask the person to bring his/ her parents when s/he, say, processes a bail application. If the university feels it needs to ‘take action’ against the student, they should treat him as an individual responsible for his actions, not a toddler who needs to be talked through his parents. By taking the course they have taken, the authorities at the university have exposed their incompetence in delivering on the responsibility of providing higher education to the future of Sikkim.