St Stephen’s College

New Delhi, June 21: The All India Institute of Medical Sciences isn’t the only premier seat of learning here to witness protests against reservation.

Students and teachers of St Stephen’s are bristling against a new 10 per cent Dalit Christian quota. The college’s alumni have taken the battle to the worldwide web, peppering it with emails and posts on various blogs and social networking portals.

One email calls the quota, which has taken the overall reservation to 60 per cent at the college, a “shameless victory for nepotism, illegality and duplicity”.

Till the last academic year, St Stephen’s had 30 per cent reservation for Christians in general, a 5 per cent sports quota, and a combined 15 per cent quota for Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes and Other Backward Classes.

Even students and alumni admitted under the Christian quota have criticised the new reservation for Dalit Christians, arguing it will undermine quality.

“The liberal and cosmopolitan traditions of the college will be the first casualty. Mediocrity will reign and pride and excellence will be hit,” said former student James George. “We shall be witness to a tortuous crumbling of a tradition of excellence and fairness built up over a century.”

“Imagine having a class of 50 students of whom 30 come from the reserved category,” said a lecturer who didn’t want to be named. “Anything that will have a negative effect on this (Stephanian) legacy will be opposed by the students and the alumni.”

One of the emails urges Stephanians to immediately start bombarding the college with applications, under the Right to Information Act, relating to its admission policy, procedures and the details of its explicit and hidden quotas.

A former principal of the college, Anil Wilson, has criticised the new quota as unconstitutional. The college is affiliated to Delhi University but claims to be governed by its own constitution.

The emails also raise questions over the appointment of the Reverend Valson Thambu, a well-known theologian and member of the National Commission for Minorities, as officer on special duty (OSD) of the college.

The alumni say the college constitution does not provide for such an office. The OSD will be running the college, which currently has no principal or vice-principal.