UGC releases advisory on anti-ragging; asks colleges, universities to fill compliance

What constitutes ragging? UGC answers

– Any act, whether intentional or not, that undermines the mental health or self-confidence of a fresher or any other student, carried out by a student to assert power, authority, superiority, or to derive sadistic pleasure.

– Any act of financial extortion or forceful expenditure burden put on a fresher or any other student by students

– Any act of physical abuse, including all variants of it: sexual abuse, homosexual assaults, stripping, forcing obscene and lewd acts, gestures, causing bodily harm or any other danger to health or person.

– Any act or abuse by spoken words, e-mail, post, public insults which would also include deriving perverted pleasure, vicarious or sadistic thrill from actively or passively participating in the discomfiture to fresher or any other student.

– Exploiting the services of a fresher or any other student for completing the academic tasks assigned to an individual or a group of students.

Ragging, the commission says, is a disturbing reality in the higher education system of our country. 

“Despite the fact that over the years ragging has claimed hundreds of innocent lives and has ruined careers of thousands of bright students, the practice is still perceived by many as a way of “familiarisation” and an “initiation into the real world” for young college-going students. Other organisations or bodies working in this field have also attempted to define ragging, the variety of definitions being reflective of differences in perspective,” UGC said in the anti-ragging portal.

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