Protesting PU theatre students lock department over ‘irregular classes’

CHANDIGARH: Fuming over irregular classes, students of the Indian theatre department at Panjab University locked the gate of the department in protest on Thursday.
Demanding ‘Badlav’ (change), the students unlocked the gate only after getting an assurance from university vice-chancellor Prof Arun Kumar Grover who promised to look into their demands.
But students continued to boycott the classes.They claimed there have been no regular classes for the past many months.
“Though class timings are 10am to 5pm from Monday to Friday, we are waiting for regular classes to take place. What are we supposed to do here? When we had joined the department, we were told that the department remains open from 10am to 10pm. But in actual, no teacher stays back after 5pm. How do we work on our productions when there is nobody to direct us,” said Abhishek Arya, the student representative of the department.
The students claimed their last play production was in May 2017. “It’s been a year since we have performed a play or staged anything. There are no academic discussions and hardly one or two lectures take place in the morning session.” Said Abhishek.
He said there is a list of 12 guest faculty members who were supposed to take classes at the department. But, the students claimed that the department has managed to bring in only two guest teachers to take our classes when the session is about to end.
Chairperson of the department Navdeep Kaur rejected the charges, saying, “Regular classes take place in the department. Everything is planned and we have approached so many eminent people to be a guest faculty in our department. They have accepted our proposal too, but we can’t force them, we have to go by their dates. Guest faculty does come to the department.”
Asked about the faculty not giving time to students for rehearsals, Navdeep Kaur said students did rehearsals for ‘tehri’ in January.
“I announced my production on Wednesday only and on Thursday this happened. I met them to resolve their problem, but they were adamant. They said they wanted to talk to the vice-chancellor only. We are a family and we have to see where the problem is,” said the chairperson.
In the afternoon, VC Grover talked to the students. Sources said he assured them that he would get guest teachers and some professor emeritus to take classes, however, the regular faculty of the department cannot be changed.
Some of the illustrious products of the department are Kirron Kher, Anupam Kher, Mahie Gill, Mangal Dhillon, Vansh Bhardwaj, Meeta Vasisth, Pankaj Berry, Gurcharan Singh, Harry Baweja