As DU reopens this week, outstation students in a fix: ‘Short notice to shift to capital, find a place to stay’

With limited campus accommodation — many colleges do not have any hostel — the biggest challenge is finding accommodation.

Bandi Aadhi is a second-year BA programme student from Telangana at Hindu College where application forms for the hostel have not been released yet. Since he joined the university after the start of the pandemic, he has never been to college. Adding to this is the financial crunch at home.

“My father is a farmer and this is not harvest time so it’s not a great time for us. I’ve booked train tickets for me, my father and brother to help me settle on February 16 and that itself was not comfortable,” he said.

He said all he needed was a week or two more to find out a little bit about accommodation options and their rates, and to manage finances.

Students who have already lived in Delhi also say finding reasonable accommodation is a challenge right now. “I used to live in a PG close to college where I used to pay Rs 5,000 per month for a bed. After the announcement by DU, I called them up and found that they’re now asking for around Rs 10,000. Most PGs also demand at least two months’ rent as security deposit. That means around Rs 40,000 as payments to be in Delhi for three months before graduating,” said Aaushi, from Hisar, Haryana, a third-year BA (Honours) English student at Ram Lal Anand College.

With almost two years of having attended college online, she said she does not think it is fair to make students compulsorily return to campus halfway through their last semester. “This is the part of the semester where assignments start piling up and I have my final semester exams in two months. I will also be preparing for entrance exams for my masters,” she said.

She is one of over 37,000 people, as of Sunday evening, who had signed an online petition asking that the option of attending the remainder of the semester online be available. Across colleges, however, administrators said that with their large class sizes, maintaining a hybrid mode of teaching-learning is not sustainable.

A second-year student from Bihar at Gargi College said she has been keen on going to the campus that she has not seen yet. “Who doesn’t dream of going to a DU college and of campus life, of fests? This is why we took admission there. But right now, it feels like we are being left to our own devices,” she said. Her college does not have a hostel.

“I am so unsure of accommodation. Neither my father nor I have ever been to Delhi, so we are not familiar with options there. I haven’t booked my tickets yet, I will not be able to get to Delhi in time to join offline classes when they start,” she said.

Some final-year students also said that unclear and conflicting information has led to troubles. “A professor of ours had told us earlier that it was 95% sure that our final semester exams will be conducted online itself. Since there was little official information, I went ahead and paid Rs 45,000 for CAT coaching in my hometown. I wish there were hints given to us earlier that this would happen,” said a third-year student at Ramjas College from Kannauj, Uttar Pradesh.

“The demand to resume offline classes came from students and there was so much pressure put on the administration last week… In DU, we don’t think a hybrid system is possible. That has many implications of its own. Different students joining through different modes will bring more disputes and it will also be too much for teachers to handle,” said DU registrar Vikas Gupta.