Hyderabad, March 24: Examination mood is slowly setting in Osmania University that has repeated postponement of examinations owing to the Telangana agitation.
The second and fourth semester exams of M.A., M.Sc. and M.com courses, which are crucial as they decide whether student will be promoted to second year or pass out of second year, have been scheduled from May 9.
The first and third semester exams will be held from May 30. And the students seem to be in no mood to skip them citing the agitation as they have realised that they are crucial to complete the course.
That the academic mood was back in place was reflected from the way the Ph.D. admission process was completed smoothly. “Our students are smart enough to understand that exams are crucial and they can’t boycott them every time,” says B. Laxmaiah, OSD to Vice-Chancellor and who has dealt with students carefully at the peak of agitation as Dean of Students’ Welfare.
Repeatedly postponed
In fact, the first and third semester examinations were scheduled on December 8, 2010. On the representation of the students they were postponed to December 18. But with the agitation in full swing and disturbances on the campus, they were further postponed.
Meanwhile, the university went ahead with the commencement of class work for the next semester from December 22, 2010.
These exams were subsequently scheduled from January 20 despite strong protests from students. Eventually, students of the campus and constituent colleges boycotted the exams while affiliated college students wrote the exams but in lesser numbers. The poor response could be gauged from the fact that out of 21,773 candidates only 3,391 appeared and the boycott was total in campus colleges.
However, the university held exams for foreign students outside the campus ensuring that they didn’t lose out.
Smart move
Senior teachers, concerned about the future of students, agreed that the university administration had made a smart move to conduct classes even as the exams were boycotted to ensure that the mandatory instruction days were met with. “This helped the university plan all the exams without losing much time,” agreed in-charge Vice-Chancellor D.N. Reddy.
Meanwhile, students also made their intentions very clear recently when some of the JAC leaders declared that they would not be in a position to continue the agitation now as they had to concentrate on their upcoming exams.
“In fact, a majority of the students were in favour of keeping the agitation and exams on different platforms. But the surcharged emotions after the release of Srikrishna Committee report made us to boycott exams,” a student leader agreed.
Differences
Differences that cropped up between JAC leaders, who were mostly research scholars, and other students, who were mostly PG students, also reduced tension on the campus. Obviously, PG students were worried that they would have to lose an academic year while research scholars would not lose anything if exams were boycotted.
-Agencies