Opinion Dear Editor, I Disagree: ‘Campus mothers’ initiative must be seen for what it is: A displacement of responsibility

Academic spaces continue to be shaped by patterns of violence that define the everyday lives of students. There are countless students whose names will never be known. Those who live and study within institutions that shame, isolate, and silence them. Those who endure relentless academic pressure, wait months for fellowships to be released, face discriminatory behaviour from faculty, or are punished for simply demanding dignity. Women students who are moral-policed, students from marginalised communities who are made to feel they do not belong and students struggling with mental health who are offered no support. They are made to carry these burdens quietly, as though suffering is an expected part of their education.

In this context, the editorial ‘Mum’s not the word’, (IE, June 14), argues that though the intention behind the initiative may be good, its gendered framing is problematic. However, it stops short of questioning the logic of such initiatives. The issue is not only about who is being assigned the task of care but also about what this task is meant to replace. The editorial narrows its critique to the gendered framing of the “Campus Mothers” initiative — it fails to confront a deeper concern that such gestures of care are being used to substitute structural accountability with symbolic empathy.

This initiative at IIT Kharagpur must be seen for what it is: A displacement of responsibility. The institution, in assigning women such as faculty or non-teaching staff as emotional points of contact, has not created support structures. It has rebranded care as an individual act, rather than a systemic responsibility. The burden of care is both feminised and depoliticised. It is taken away from structures with the power to change conditions. It is reinforcing a gendered logic in which women are made responsible for tending to emotional wounds, regardless of where those wounds come from. Their academic expertise, institutional authority, and professional roles are sidelined to make room for a more palatable identity: The ever-giving, ever-listening, ever-available mother.

To imagine care differently, we need to turn to political frameworks that have treated it as a collective right, not a personal burden. Feminist thinkers like Kristen Ghodsee have shown how collectivised care systems, especially under socialist frameworks, allowed women greater freedom, dignity, and autonomy. Care cannot be a temporary plaster over structural wounds.

Students need care. They need to be seen and heard. But modelling it into motherhood turns care into something private, emotional, and feminine, rather than collective, political, and structural. It is a redistribution of institutional neglect. The editorial recognises this. It notes that “a more inclusive and thoughtful model that invites faculty, staff and residents of all genders to serve as trained campus mentors would reflect the span of empathy, equality, and shared responsibility”. But a truly empathetic care system hinges on listening to the student. The editorial overlooks this imperative. Student movements have already imagined what collective care can look like. Through peer support networks, anti-caste collectives, and demands for institutional changes like functioning grievance bodies, these students have built spaces of care grounded in solidarity. Student organisations and collectives are often the only ones demanding structural change. Yet, in several institutions, they are the first to be surveilled, vilified, and punished. This is part of a broader refusal to engage with dissent, to treat students as stakeholders, or to acknowledge the violence embedded in campus hierarchies.

Care, if it is to be meaningful, cannot come from silencing those who resist. It must come from listening to them, learning from them and building with them. To truly reimagine care, institutions must first learn to listen. It is students who have already begun to show what solidarity, support, and resistance can look like. Institutions must follow their lead. It is through their vision that campuses can imagine something better — structures of care rooted not in symbolism, but in justice and shared responsibility.

The writer is a research scholar at the Department of Political Science, AKDC, affiliated to the University of Allahabad