Are we all deserving enough?

I heart the vision and idea behind this blog, and I really think that sane, rational arguments are the way forward. As the title of this post might indicate, I am going to raise some issues plaguing our own student fraternity here. I think it is only fair that we question ourselves before we question the college or the department.

Is our college really smoke(r) free?

You know what smoke I am talking about. Regardless of what your personal views on smoking is, smoking is harmful and even if you think otherwise, you are bound by the anti-smoking rule enforced in the campus. Yet, almost all of us know what really is happening. The rules are obviously being flouted. Even though it's a minority - it ironical that these are the same set of people who complain about rules and restrictions.

Is everyone on OD really on OD?

Again, this is an example of the actions of a minority of us causing inconvenience to those who genuinely are involved in various college related and extra curricular activities. The fact is, quite a few of us mis-use ODs. Even during the lead up to the Paradigm I noticed that there were people doing absolutely nothing for days.

Do we really take our labs seriously?

How many of us actually make a sincere attempt to code our lab programs before stealing it off someone and claiming it as your own? It's a great irony that the only part of our education system which somewhat encourages actual hands-on learning is being stolen, copied, outsourced and plagiarized.

There are various issues that I can raise, but I am going to stop with the three above. I guess the larger picture is this - the majority of the "rules" in the department are increasingly being catered to prevent the misuse by the minority of us. These minority make it look as if the entire student fraternity is out to self destruct themselves.

And it's not a coincidence that many such of us have an ordinary academic record too. Yeah, yeah, I know studies are not everything and our system breeds rote learning and all that - but really, whatever is the case, we have a duty to fulfill as students and frankly many of us do not even take any joy out of what we are studying. You can't blame the college for thinking that by being in class more often, it will help the few of us who are struggling.  (I do know that this is not always true either). So, it all boils down to this: If ALL of us really did show the kind of maturity and responsibility required of us - we would not have many of the silly rules that are plaguing us today.

There is room for betterment from not just the department, but from us too.

Hello World

With nearly two-thirds of a semester over, I hadn't coded a single Internet Programming Lab Exercise in the Lab. I had to code everything at home/hostel. The reason: our 'powerful servers' from Sun Microsystems in the Java Technology Lab, could not take the load of 33 simultaneous users. The machines were thin clients and so we would all be logging into one of the two servers and in effect would be sharing the resources of that server. The computers would freeze quite often and restart automatically (built in mechanisms?). And all this, while we still used a text-editor and a stripped down version of the desktop. I wonder if anyone in the industry uses a plain text editor to code in Java, given its array of API functions. Use the internet, for reference, you say! Well, two people on two different terminals cannot access the same site at the same time. Our infamous proxy server would say "simultaneous connections detected". So even the best of students' efforts to actually code their own programs in the lab would be crushed and spirits would be dampened every lab ;-) The irony - computers at the JAVA Technology Lab crash when we run Java programs on them. I guess the systems are just not powerful enough to take the kind of programs we students design! Is it that the systems need an overhaul, or are they configured incorrectly, no one knows. Too bad Sun Microsystems, now we have a bad image of your computers and of the Solaris OS.

And then it happened. We spoke to the HOD, and she graciously let us use the new Open Source Lab! The computers are blazing fast, and I wrote my first program in college today. "Hello IP Lab!". And we have netbeans for an editor. Yipee!

A big THANK YOU to the HOD and other staff who facilitated the change of lab process.

P.S.: As you can see from this post, we want this blog to be a medium for expressing students' opinions about college happenings, and not just a place where we carp about every little thing. Currently, there exists NO MEDIUM like this in college. No, class committee meetings don't seem to serve their purpose.

We the Students

This blog shall be the voice of final year CSE-A students of 2006-10 batch. The voice shall grow louder if and when more people wish to join us. The address of the blog pretty much sums up the reason for this blog itself. Despite repeated attempts to strike the right chord with the staff in the department and the supposed "rules" of the department, we have not received a response at all, let alone a proper one. So, we shall write till our queries are taken note of.

We do not wish to go against the department. We merely wish to understand the need for certain rules and also the reason for the lack of fairness in the treatment of students in the department. We shall, of course, write out our queries and problems and also, with the freedom of expression that we possess, make accusations and appreciations of the staff in the department. It is only fair to accept that we have the right and the reason to do the same.

The blog mainly is inspired by a classroom discussion we had today with the class-in-charge about the fact that we had talked to the staff in a way that they found rude. The staff, being as knowledgeable as they claim to be, should probably try and analyze the reason for the students' rudeness, if they were rude in the first place. We, the students of CSE-A do not wish to offend the rules of the department or its staff and we do expect the same from them. Let us just say we do not like the way we are being treated these days.

The one glaring flaw, we find is that there is minimum coordination with the way the college claims to work and the way the department is run. The class committe meeting flatters only to deceive and any suggestion made by class representatives, besides going unnoticed, is made fun of. Our problems are very rarely attended to and hardly listened to.

Another problem is the lack of co-ordination amongst the staff in the department itself. While some are exceptionally helpful, the others tend to see a lotta students as enemies. We students have no choice but to take whatever is told to us because we are a bit afraid of losing our internal marks and very uncertain as to how it will affect our final year projects. It is something like covering up the tarnish in our dignity with our ambitions for a secure future. We would hope the staff understand that.

This is the end of only the beginning of an interesting quest. As students with common sense, we shall continue to voice our views- not forcing people to listen or react but only hoping that one day we will enjoy classes and our relationship with the staff in the department.

For Respect!