Dear JNU aspirants, us JNU students are sorry.
I am a student of JNU and I am sorry to all the future aspirants who had wished to study in Jawaharlal Nehru University despite different propaganda which is attached to the university.
We failed you. As you fill forms for the entrance, we are seeing the new structural changes which are very exclusive in nature. Students of MBA will pay ₹12 lakh as fees for their course work in the same campus where other students are paying just ₹280 of their course work.
JNU students pursuing their MPhil will not be sure anymore about where they’ll get their PhD degree from, because of de-linking of the MPhil and PhD programmes. Most importantly, I am sorry for those students who did not have computers in their schools and therefore did not know how to operate one but were forced to give an online examination.
I would tell you aspirants that we tried we fight against this injustice but right now, the situation in our country and in JNU is such that no one in the power is ready to listen. In our country, the citizens are not heard and in JNU, our administrative head (the Vice-Chancellor) doesn’t listen to the students.
For the past three years, our Vice Chancellor hasn’t listened to us even once and he is carrying out changes which are so exclusive in nature that he is destroying the dream of many who have dreamt of studying at JNU since they were little.
I believe our Vice-Chancellor wants only empty buildings in the university with no students, and especially keep these buildings away from those students who come from marginalised communities. Earlier, students of JNU had such consideration for the university that they felt responsible for how the planning of an inclusive policy for admission was carried out. It brings me great sorrow now because our Vice-Chancellor wants to dismantle all inclusiveness of our university.
These arbitrary decisions which have been taken by the Vice-Chancellor without including the JNUSU (Jawaharlal Nehru University Student Union) who are elected representatives of students. He has also sent guards everywhere to stop students and union members from interacting with him.
Students went on marches, protests, boycotted classrooms, sat on strikes and in the end, sat on an indefinite hunger strike but still the Vice-Chancellor did not care to even come to see the students.
The JNUTA (Jawaharlal Nehru University Teachers’ Association) seeing the condition of students who were on hunger strike, requested them to discontinue. They were told that the teachers did not want to lose the students to a shameless administration. So, after nine long days of hunger strike, the students discontinued.
Aspirants, to you I would say, we have let you down. It has not been the right time and situation for students since 2014, but I can promise that “apna time aayega” and we will restore the essence of JNU which was most inclusive in nature.