After 14 days of protest, SRFTI students start shifting to their allotted rooms

KOLKATA: After 14 days of protest by students of the Satyajit Ray Film and Television Institute (SRFTI), the situation on campus partially returned to normalcy on Monday. Director of the institute Debamitra Mitra also agreed to revoke the expulsion orders of the students – a demand that had led the students to protest from October 17. However, the students refused to withdraw their relay hunger strike that was called on Saturday.
On Monday, the administrative building was opened for work.The faculty members were finally able to use the biometric time attendance system. Classes also resumed in the television wing of the institute. However, classes for the films’ division didn’t resume since that would require some amount of restructuring of the existing schedule.
Said Mitra, “We received three letters. One from the 14 expelled girl students. The other letter was from the nine boys who were individually sent show cause notices for not agreeing to hostel segregation. The third was from the Students’ Association.”
In all the three letters, the students have mentioned that they had taken the protest route because of ideological differences with the administration on the issue of hostel segregation. In the letter from the Students’ Association, reference was made to the “collective decision” taken to protect themselves against the hostel segregation based on gender with “no intention of vandalism or to create unreasonable and unwanted discord”.
Mitra was glad that the students themselves had condemned the vandalism on campus. “We are happy with the students’ positive gesture of agreeing to hostel segregation. This also proves that along with us, they too were keen to resolve the issue at the earliest so that institute can return to normalcy and they can go back to their studies,” she said. The administration has agreed to revoke the expulsion orders once the shifting process is complete. “We have requested them to withdraw the hunger strike,” Mitra added.
A general body meeting of students on the issue of withdrawing the hunger strike was held. Said Akshay Gauri, president of the students’ association, “The hunger strike is on till the students don’t get in hand a notice of revocation of their expulsion/show-cause. Shrushti Rao, Nikhilesh Mattoo, Amit Ray, Vignesh S., Koustabh Mukherjee, Joydeep, Arghya Kayal are on the hunger strike tonight. However, we appreciate the administration’s positive move today. Finally after 14 days, we will start to shift to our allotted rooms right from tonight.”
Said Debottam Basu, additional general secretary of SRFTI’s students’ association, “We are happy that the dean Ashoke Viswanathan and the director-in-charge Amaresh Chakraborty along with other faculty members took personal initiative to speed up the process and gave us a written assurance about the revocation of the expulsion orders only with a written warning.”