Who will guard the guards?

By Maduranga KALUGAMPITIYA

(Department of English, University of Peradeniya)

One of the main factors which set universities apart from other educational institutions is the considerable, if not excessive, freedom that the chief stakeholders of these establishments enjoy. This freedom is mandatory to ensure an intellectual environment conducive to advanced learning and, most importantly, novel thinking. Freedom in such intellectual environments, especially in the field(s) of Social Sciences and Humanities, should guarantee a space in which ideological positions could be contested and taken-for-granted realities could be problematized. Nevertheless, if this freedom instead unduly privileges a particular group of stakeholders and grants them absolute power over the rest that would permit them to mutilate intellectual freedom, thereby creating an anti-intellectual environment, and control not only the social life, but also the biological life of another set of stakeholders, then something is seriously wrong with the system in question.

A form of ragging

Ragging has made its annual appearance in the Faculty of Arts of the University of Peradeniya and it has once again become the centre of attention in the Faculty with the recent intake of the new batch of students. A sense of dull uniformity has once again begun to pervade legendary Peradeniya, which is expected to be a place for the celebration of diversity and differences. An extremely discomforting and demoralizing silence, pale and hapless amateur faces waiting in queues till their turn comes, fierce looks on the faces of those who have taken on the role of the supreme guide and guard, an occasional outburst of tears of an amateur who has reached the limits of his/her endurance, an occasional collapse of a to-be-scholar on the way to a lecture hall, and frequent admissions to the University Health Centre have currently become characteristic features of this place, a place that has always stood as the uncontested symbol of academic excellence in Sri Lanka.

University ragging is projected, by its proponents, as a necessary"initiation" process into the university life. Building of student personality and creation of equality among students are some of the publicly articulated arguments in favour of ragging. Despite the obviously negative connotations and associations of the term, there seems to be a sense of public tolerance for ragging primarily on the grounds that ragging has been in practice in Sri Lankan universities for a long time. Nevertheless, irrespective of all these arguments, the present situation with regard to ragging at Peradeniya, especially in the Faculty of Arts, requires the general understanding of ragging and the mainstream attitude towards it to be closely scrutinized.

It is a well- known fact that every year a vast majority of the freshers who enter the Faculty are subjected to numerous forms of ragging by a group of enior students for a considerable period of time. Fresh admissions always give rise to a scenario marked by a gross violation of each and every possible democratic right of the freshers, a complete negligence of the general rule of law of the country, an explicit contestation of the formal centre of power of the establishment, and a remarkable intolerance towards any ideological position or practical action that does not fall in line with the position, ideological and otherwise, of the champions of this "initiation" process. The fact that the representatives of the student bodies that keep this "initiation" process live and kicking first openly and voluntarily commit themselves to the cause of eradicating ragging from the university context and then openly negate their commitment by getting actively involved in ragging the freshers indicates the unregulated autonomy that these student bodies enjoy. The ugly truth that the formal authorities find it difficult, if not impossible, to keep these champions of the "initiation" process who present themselves as the select guards of the Peradeniya tradition and subculture under control eventually poses Tankado's golden question in Dan Brown's *Digital Fortress*, which is "Who will guardthe guards?"

The numerous forms of this "initiation" process ranging from "innocent" ones like asking the freshers to sing songs to severe forms of mental and physical abuse and torture that are being reported indicate an escalation of ragging related activities in the Faculty this time. Some reported cases of freshers not being permitted to wear undergarments, being required to wear the same dress over a period of about two weeks, not being allowed to take a proper body wash, not being permitted proper meals, especially those of their choice, and the seniors who are involved in ragging retaining the exclusive power to decide even the menu of the meals for the freshers attest to the fact that in certain areas ragging has risen to unprecedented heights. The alleged cases of sexual abuse, in addition to physical, mental, and verbal abuse, carried out in the name of and as part of this "initiation" process mainly in residential halls signal the gravity of the issue in question. The tragic irony that some students have had to keep away from the Faculty premises, while some others have completely given up their university education, solely due to ragging, and some parents have had (at least initially) to escort their children to and from the Faculty for the fear of their children being subjected to torture raises serious issues with regard to the validity of the institution as a place that is supposed to promote and strengthen the independence, intellectual and otherwise, of its students.

The widespread assumption that ragging is necessary to build studentpersonality and create equality among students generates a space in which a claim could be made for ragging as a necessary "initiation" process. Nevertheless, a close analysis of this process would convince anyone with a critical mind of the need to reconsider this assumption. If the promised personality, which is capable of standing against various forms of authority, turns a blind eye to the authority and hegemony of the "personality builders", and if the assured equality entails the dragging down of individuals who are in comparatively better social positions to inferior social scales and not vice versa, then this "initiation" process is definitely at fault.

One of the claims that is constantly made to show the difficulty of findinga solution to the problem and, in some cases, to reason out the failure to combat ragging in a solid manner is that the freshers do not cooperate with the formal authorities in realizing their objective. Although the claim sounds valid to a certain extent, the reality is more complex than that. In the case of a majority of the freshers who undergo ragging, their apparent consent to it is more a matter of the options being limited than a matter of personal choice. The absence of a well established mechanism for the administration to reach the freshers, the immense power and authority that the senior students who are involved in ragging show themselves to possess, the de facto dictatorship of the champions of ragging that is in effect in certain crucial spaces in the University like the canteens and residential halls, the neutral position that the broader society seems to have adopted in relation to the ragging issue, and the absence of alternative student groups whom the majority of the freshers find comfortable to identify themselves with are a couple of factors that have left most of the freshers with no option but to go with the tide.

The widespread (mis)conception that one's acceptance of and participationin ragging and ragging only grants him/her full access to the universitylife proper functions as an incentive for most of the freshers to go through this "initiation" process without being critical of it.

The immense pressure that is unleashed upon the freshers, coupled with thehigh dose of brainwashing that they are subjected to throughout the ragging period, succeed in implanting certain anti-social tendencies in the minds of a considerable segment of the freshers. In my view, this explains the basis for the magical conversion of the offended in one year to the offender in the following year. The (anti)socialization process that takes place in university contexts pushes the minds of these prospective scholars to a point where they can easily fall prey to extremist forces. If universities continue to produce a line of offended-turned-offenders at a time when society needs scholars who are progressive and anti-social in a positive sense these institutions cannot be prevented from ceasing to be relevant to the broader society.

A considerable number of Faculty members and students have shown a keeninterest in eradicating ragging over the past couple of years even at the risk of being publicly humiliated and, in some cases, physically attacked. The students who have chosen to oppose ragging either in the form of refusing to be ragged or in the form of actively taking part in anti-ragging movements have had to face numerous hardships more or less throughout their stay in the university. The university administration in general and the faculty administration in particular have taken numerous measures with the aim of stopping or, at least, controlling this abominable practice of ragging in the faculty. However, due to the absence of a strong mechanism that fails to match the established strength of the student bodies that are involved in ragging and their outside support mechanisms, these attempts have failed to yield lasting solutions to the problem.

In a context where ragging operates as a form of terrorism calling not onlythe intellectual freedom, but also the basic democratic freedom of a number of chief stakeholder groups into question, the eradication of ragging is crucial for the assurance and strengthening of the intellectual and democratic environment, which the universities are expected to provide. Ragging could be eradicated by making sure that the universities are no exception to the general rule of the country. The urgent need to put an end to this abominable practice of ragging indicates, in my view, the necessity for a broad mechanism in which the university administration, the other chief stakeholder groups, and the authorities that are responsible for the keeping of law and order in the country collaborate in working out a feasible and acceptable solution to the problem at hand. Such a solution will hopefully make sure that "the guards will be guarded".

(The writer is a lecturer attached to the Department of English , University of Peradeniya)