Other side of life at MSU hostels

VADODARA, Dec 13: Life in M S University hostel is not all fun and frolic. Breaking norms may be a part of it, but it also includes humil...

VADODARA, Dec 13: Life in M S University hostel is not all fun and frolic. Breaking norms may be a part of it, but it also includes humiliation from juniors and ridicule from others, if the experience of some residents of all the four university hostels is anything to go by.

While at the S D Hall, senior hostelites were the butt of jokes at the welcome party, their counterparts at the P G hostel were not allotted to occupy a room of their choice, usually a privilege allowed to seniors. At the H M Hall, a few girls were allegedly moved to a room of the warden’s choice without even having been consulted.

When contacted by Express Newsline, a student residing in the S D Hall for the last six years claimed, “A skit was organised at the welcome party and the target was the senior residents of the hostel. The message was that we are to be treated like ancient people.”

Apart from this, some girls were allegedly woken up in the middle of the night and asked to sign on a blank paper. This resident claimed that the reason — the reinstatement of a former monitor of the hostel — was divulged only after several of the sleepy girls had already signed the paper.

According to a hostelite, they submitted a memorandum to the hostel warden to initiate action against the erring students. When contacted, hostel warden M Vyas said that though she could not take any action, she had forwarded the case to Chief Warden of the Hostels N L Singh. “It is upto him to take action against the students,” she said.

Humiliation and lobbying at the H M Hall for the residents are of a different kind. A resident of this hostel claimed, “We had gone for our vacations and after we came back, we realised our luggage was shifted to another room. Though the luggage was intact, the rooms were not of our choice.”

But according to H M Hall warden V Barve, the girls were shifted because they had demanded it.

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Another resident of H M Hall added that the inmates of this hostel were facing the problem of not having a room-mate of their choice. She claimed that after residing for a certain number of years in the hostel, a hostelite could choose her room-mate. “But demands of only a certain group of girls were fulfilled by the warden. And whenever we sought a choice, we were told that there were certain rules which had to be maintained,” she alleged.

However, Chief Warden of Hostels N L Singh said, that hostel inmates themselves created problems and solved it too. He said that after they submit memoranda, when they were called, they claimed that the problems were solved. The hostelites should first approach the hostel warden before the Chief Warden, he added.