The University Grants Commission (UGC) has issued guidelines to set up police stations in campuses of all universities across the country, including Odisha, to ensure the safety of students of higher educational institutions (HEIs) on and off the campus.
UGC Secretary Dr Jaspal S Sandhu, in a letter to Vice-Chancellors of all universities, has emphasised that ensuring students’ safety from attacks, threats and accidents should be the prime concern of educational administrators.
The UGC has suggested setting up of police stations in campuses, besides commissioning of a student body of Community Service Officers. “With students studying late night, these officers can provide short distance escort service to the nearest taxi or bus stand, besides helping with night patrol,” says the guideline document. Installing emergency notification system on the lines of the successful University of California’s ‘WarnMe’ model is another suggestion.
“HEIs can take all necessary steps to instal an emergency notification system, which will send an emergency message via email, telephone, cell phone and text messaging within minutes of occurrence of an incident that poses an immediate threat to health and safety of campus community members,” the guideline document said.
Self-defence training for women studying and working in campusrs should be made a mandatory component of extracurricular activities undertaken in HEIs, the document noted. Calling on institutions to set up support and education mechanisms to educate students on sexual violence, colleges were instructed to confront oppressive stereotypes which cause interpersonal violence.
The UGC has also mandated institutions to set up a ‘Students Counselling System’ for managing problems and challenges faced by them. Teacher-counsellors trained to act as guardians of students are to submit growth report and feedback to parents and help in initiating corrective action upon discovering anomaly in behaviour patterns.
Some points of the guidelines include securing HEIs or hostels by a boundary wall of such height that it cannot be scaled over easily. A fence of spiralling barbed wires can be surmounted on the wall so that unauthorised access to the infrastructure is prevented effectively.
Biometric way of marking student attendance, both in HEIs as well as hostels, can be an effective way to overcome proxy, they added. Students and staff should be provided easily identifiable and authentic ID cards and wearing of such cards in the institutional premises must be made compulsory by administration.
At least one woman security personnel should be deployed at such entry points so that physical security check of girl students or visitor can be undertaken. The bags and other belongings of students or visitors should also be examined, manually or by metal detectors, to secure a weapon-free and violence-free campus, the guidelines said.