Editorial
BCL gone out of control
Put a cap on its violent activities
The New Year was greeted by violence of the Chattra League in the public universities and it has, regrettably, continued unabated. It is very difficult to accept the spurt in its violent activities. It is equally difficult to understand the ruling party's lack of response to stop these.
Not only have the BCL indulged in clashes with other students, infightings have resulted in loss of lives, as we witnessed in Jahangirnagar University very recently. It looks as if the BCL has become an arm of the government in educational institutions to suppress dissent. Otherwise how does one explain their attack on the general students of the JnU who were calling for doing away with extra fees?
Unfortunately, in many of these institutions the administration is known to have sided with the errant BCL activists. It is also disconcerting to see teachers, supporting the legitimate demands of the general students, being set upon by so-called pro-administration teachers.
Admittedly, there are several underlying causes for the way student activism has turned out in recent times, but one of the primary reasons is the partisan university administration and partisan office holders, who forget that they are teachers first and that all students, irrespective of whether they are affiliated to any political party or their student wing or not, deserve to be treated equally. That, regrettably, is not the case in many public universities.
The other reason for the current state of affairs in these educational institutions is the government affiliated student body going completely out of control, so much so that in some cases even the pro-government university administration is unable to control them.
We wonder how many more students' lives, how many more violent incidents, how much more disruption of classes it will take for the AL to realise that the political dividend it had expected by sponsoring the BCL has not paid off, on the contrary, it has only helped to sully the image of the party.
It is time the AL reined in the BCL and cleaned it up of the bad eggs and the deadwoods. We would hope too that the university administration would understand the merit of assuming non-partisan attitude in dealing with student matters.
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