Another case of college harassment came to light when Delhi boy, Sushant Rohilla, a 21-year-old BA LLB student from Amity Law School, IP University, hanged himself on August 10 at his residence. In his suicide note, he reportedly wrote he was a failure and did not wish to live.
A few days after his death his sister Mehak Rohilla shared an email he sent to the college on Facebook where he requested them to not debar him from semester examinations due to shortage of attendance. The email said, “Please do not debar me, it will hamper my life to an unimaginable extent. Please help, me sir, if I get debarred, I might not mentally survive this.”
His father Jagdish Kumar, a joint secretary in Rajya Sabha, blamed college officials for his son’s suicide. Responding to the controversy, Savita Mehta- Vice-President, Communications, Amity Group, said, Sushant had 43 per cent attendance and his parents were repeatedly informed about it over emails.
But the sister claimed that Sushant had missed many classes because he was busy representing college at various events and even organising event for the college for which he should have been given attendance.
One of Sushant’s friends, Teerth Waraich, also shared the whole incident in a series of tweets in which he mentioned that Sushant could not attend college for a brief period because of his foot injury. He also said that the college norm about attendance was rather flexible, his tweet read, “Our College has a 75% attendance norm but it is completely arbitrary. They forgave attendance for Miss India contestant but killed my friend.”
AIB’s Rohan Joshi shared a heart breaking personal experience of a similar nature after reading about Sushant, in which he explains one of the major reasons he dropped out of his engineering college was a teacher who didn’t treat him well. Comedian Aditi Mittal also spoke for the cause.
Since then #JusticeForSushant has been trending on twitter. Students have been protesting in the college campus demanding the resignation of the college director. They have refused to attend classes.
Harassment by college administration is a major issue faced by students today. Teachers can make or break a students’ career. This type of power sometimes puts pressure on the student and they see a dark future for themselves. Lack of counselling in colleges also adds up to the stress. Students cannot talk to anybody about it in fear that no one will believe them. Teachers and administration should not be given this kind of power, and in cases like Sushant’s a special committee should be formed to oversee sensitive cases. Students are college’s responsibility, any institution that backs off from it is a failure in itself.
College is an institution, not a slaughterhouse.
