Colleges can stop the ragging of new students in their camps - here’s how?

Colleges can stop the ragging of new students in their camps – here’s how?

Ragging has its root in some of the European colleges, where seniors played certain practical jokes at the time of welcoming the fresher’s, which was gradually adopted by the entire world. Ragging if done in a simple and sweet way does not harm anybody and increases your contacts and friendships amongst the students. But in today’s time ragging is taking a very serious facet and often harms the person who is being raged in an emotional way. Due to all these reasons, ragging has been banned in almost all the countries across the world. But yet India and Srilanka are two countries where ragging still persists in the most wicked form. Ragging is a very common feature in almost all the colleges but is mainly seen in Medical and Engineering colleges in a very severe form.

There are various ways in which the fresher’s are ragged, i.e. dressing in a funny manner and attending the college, for example, dressing in multi colors like yellow pants, red shirt, and white shoes or often cross dressing as an extensive form of ragging has been observed. Introducing oneself in any one particular language usually Hindi. Loose talking is also a very common way of ragging or asking the fresher’s to sing any vulgar song. Clothes stripping, discussing sexual interests or any physical activity like kissing or touching of private parts are also included as a type of serious ragging. Asking the juniors to wash their clothes, complete assignments, cleaning of rooms are quite common in hostel accommodations. At a very serious stage, drugs abuse is also found to be a part of ragging. The serious and severe kind of ragging usually causes a lot of emotional torture to the person. The consequences of ragging range from permanent emotional scars on the mind of the individual, alienation from the society and the rest of the world, misbalance of the mental state of the individual, students who have succumbed to ragging face difficulty in paying attention and hence affecting their career and in severe cases leading to suicides.

The college staff and committee should take strict action against the people who are ragging in the college premises. The colleges should form an anti- ragging committee to discourage and ragging activities taking place in the college. They could advertise in their brochures stating that students indulging into ragging activities shall be due for severe action and so on.

Students found guilty of indulging into ragging activities will be levied with strict punishments like suspension, withholding scholarships, debarring from any event taking place in the colleges, withholding examination results or blacklisting the candidate in severe cases. Placing numbers and contacts of the members of the anti – ragging committee on pin boards or notice boards in the colleges as well as hostel for the students to complain in case of witnessing any ragging incident. Having continuous vigil in the premises of the college and hostel and especially in any ragging prone zones like, canteen, rooms, or any isolated places in the college or hostel. The trustees or the government can withdraw the finances from those colleges where ragging is reported or cancellation of the certificate of the college to operate in cases of ragging incidents being reported.

Usually when ragging takes place, the fresher’s are terrorized by the seniors so as to they do not complain to the college authorities. Hence the college authorities should take care of such incidents by providing continuous vigil and by taking severe actions against raggers. Ragging is a heinous crime and should be stopped on an immediate basis.