Hyderabad: Students of ICFAI Business School (IBS), Hyderabad, staged a protest on the campus on Monday against a new rule that was to come into effect today.
The rule which had been put up on the notice board a few days ago, forbade students from leaving the campus between 9 am and 5:30 pm, except under special circumstances. If it was an emergency, students would have to approach the dean or director of the institute for permission to leave. In all cases, their entry and exit would be monitored using biometric attendance systems.
Several students took to Twitter to vent their ire against the management, demanding to know why adult students could not be left to decide what they wanted to do during the day. One student on Twitter compared IBS to a jail. Another asked if this was how the institute planned to become a premier business school, “by keeping us as their prisoners and hosta-ges for six days a week”.
The new rule is valid for all students in all the various courses in the various institutes that are part of the ICFAI Foundation for Higher Education (IFFE) — BBA, MBA, PhD, BTech and BBA+LLB.
A representative of IBS claimed that the rules were for the benefit of the students! “A lot of the students keep going out and don’t come back until late in the night. There aren’t a lot of colleges at Shankarapalli, so any youngster seen outside is assumed to be an IFFE student. These students are bringing disrepute to us,” he said.
A student, speaking on condition of anonymity, was angered by these comments. “How can students visiting a restaurant or a movie theatre be bad for the institute? Why are they making us seem like vagabonds or children,” he asked pertinently.
The IBS official then claimed it was the police who had suggested this rule. “The police told us to keep the students in check. They asked us to ensure the students don’t go out and get into trouble off campus.”
Chevella ACP P. Ravinder Reddy confirmed that the police had indeed advised the management to implement stricter rules. “Yes, we wanted the students to stay off the roads during the evenings to avoid any possible mishaps. But we haven’t asked any college to restrict the movements of students. That is their call entirely.”
It is learnt that later in the day, after nearly four hours of talks between the management and the students, the restrictions were temporarily stayed.
