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Deadline dilemma?

Hostels in the city are clearly in a discriminatory mode as they offer different curfew timings for men and women.

Only just a couple of months ago, a college in our neighbouring state of Kerala extended their curfew from 4:30 pm to 8:30 pm for the women students; that too after a member of the alumni filed a petition with the high court and a weeklong protest. Protests like these are not isolated events as students across India are questioning such oppressive systems.

“Discrimination always stands high. For women, the curfew was 11 pm and for the men, it was an hour later and that’s not fair. After all, we’re all students of the same institute. Why do they need extra hours?” asks Fathima Aaliya Anwar, a former student of Kannur Medical College.

“I stay in a hostel with a curfew of 9 pm which was only extended recently because of summer. As for the men’s hostel, it’s stated 9 pm but they’re not strict about it, unlike the women’s hostel where if we have to step out post curfew, we need to follow a procedure — we have to contact their parents and make them talk to the warden and finally sign an out pass before leaving.”, says Rajashree, a BTech student of UPES, Uttarakhand.

Though not out in the open yet, hostels in Bengaluru too have similar discriminatory practises, and students are not taking it well, for good reason too!
“I’ve stayed in two different hostels here, over the course of the last two years and both of them had curfews as early as 6 pm, while the men’s hostel had an 8 pm curfew, but they were sometimes allowed to enter even later,” says Heidi Thomas, a student of mass media communication in a renowned college in Bengaluru. “I have also personally faced extreme levels of judgement in the last hostel I resided in, based on the fact that I sometimes couldn’t adhere to the curfew, given the field assignments my course demands. Eventually I had to leave because it stopped me from pursuing what I could otherwise”, she added.

In the end, are curfews really for the sake of safety? More often though, rather than ensuring safety, such curfew are hindering the activities of women students - be it staying out as part of a college project or just a walk in the moonlight, while reinforcing the deeply oppressive idea of ‘she was assaulted because she was out late’.

“In the first year of college, the curfew was 9 pm for 6 months. Then, it was extended to 11 pm which is fairly decent. It only poses a problem when we have tickets to a movie that ends late, or early morning flights or trains to catch, in which case we need to write a letter and get it signed by the warden. However, the boys do not have a curfew and so they can get back whenever they want or not come back at all”, says a medical student (requested anonymity) from a prominent medical college in the city.
— Angel Maria

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