A shaky campus

The campus of the University of Dhaka has become restive again and that is by no means an event to be overlooked. As reported, the students were agitating for the recognition of 4-year Honours course as equivalent to Masters and that seemed quite sensible. It is also reported that the university authority accepted the demand. Then we found in the media a elaborate pictorial view of the horrid activities of a section of the students who attacked and battered the innocent students including a reporter of the Daily Star and evicted them from the students' halls at the dead of night and that's too before the nose of the law-enforcing agency. We are quite at a loss to make out the logic behind such an ugly show of muscle power by the vested quarter.

However, here in Bangladesh the laws of Newton hold good in the campus too. As an equal and opposite reaction, the other student fronts called out a strike and paralysed the university activities. Intermittent skirmishes between the rival student fronts with the slanting law-enforcing agency pose a real threat to the already deteriorating law and order situation. The need of the hour is not the flexing of muscle, but a pragmatic approach by the establishment to fuse the situation by taking into confidence the students' community irrespective of their political affiliation. I would urge the policy makers to remember their student days and refrain from being harsh to our greatest resources, our pride and our future.