Fearing student unrest, engineering colleges vacate hostels in Tamil Nadu

Studies particularly for those enrolled in engineering courses across Tamil Nadu have gone for a toss with authorities in many colleges asking their students to vacate the hostels to prevent them from using the facilities for agitating against Sri Lanka over the plight of the Tamil citizens in the island nation. According to a Times of India report , the Tamil Nadu government ordered the shut down of 525 engineering colleges affiliated to Anna University.

“The college management do not want to see hordes of protesters near their premises because it’ll tarnish the college’s image. The Principals of the colleges are in-charge of ensuring that students vacate the campuses at the earliest."— the Times of India report said quoting a student .

A Firstpost report on Monday said, “What started as hunger strikes and street protests by a few colleges in Chennai is now spreading to other parts of the state such as Kancheepuram, Coimbatore and Tirunelveli. On Sunday, students of Chennai IIT also joined the movement. Perhaps no other part of the country has seen such a genuine students’ movement over a political issue in the recent past. Although the colleges are kept closed to keep things under control, it hasn’t deterred students from coming on to the streets.”

What is notable in the protest is the “overwhelming involvement of students of professional courses, mainly engineering”, the Firstpost report had said .

The tradition is usually that students pursuing professional courses are the last to join any public agitation, but this time, they are dominating the movement.

Even as students have now taken to social networking websites to forward their cause of alleged violation of human rights in Sri Lanka against the Tamil citizens, the disruption in the academic schedule is likely to increase burden on the teachers and students after it restarts.