Students take part in Pink Walk — a march to spread breast cancer awareness organised by AIIMS-Patna. Picture by Ranjeet Kumar Dey Bhoomika Vihar director Shilpi Singh speaks at the inauguration of the gender cell at AN College. Picture by Ranjeet Kumar Dey

School students gave out a strong message on how they would take responsibility to make the city a better place through skits at a competition at Chandragupt Institute of Management, Patna (CIMP).

Hosted by the management institute, the daylong skit competition was inaugurated on October 27 by CIMP director V. Mukunda Das.

The first group to perform was Prakritik School whose play addressed the issue of saving water resources. Kendriya Vidyalaya, Kankerbagh, performed a skit on “misuse of resources” while International School’s performance was a discourse on how to save water.

Patna Central School and DAV- Walmi performed skits on saving water. The DAV-BSEB skit addressed all the four themes, while BD Public School and Baldwin Academy emphasised on how saving resources would save lives and the world.

DAV-BSEB won the competition. The second, third and fourth prizes went to Kendriya Vidyalaya, Kankerbagh, DAV, Walmi and International School, respectively. While the top four teams got cash prizes, the others were given participation certificates.

In his welcome speech, CIMP director Mukunda Das said: “Everyone should take responsibility to save the limited natural resources we have.” He also spoke on the social work done by the institute.

Fest award

National Institute of Technology, Patna, got the best college award at Concetto 2013 — a three-day fest organised by the Indian School of Mines, Dhanbad.

At least 1,000 students of different engineering colleges took part in the fest held from October 25 to 27.

Eight robotics competitions were organised. NIT-Patna won 15 prizes in these. They also won awards in a cricket quiz.

NIT-Patna had also won the best college award at Concetto last year.

Gyan Shankar, a final-year NIT-Patna student, said: “The biggest advantage of participating at such a fest is that it gives exposure to engineering students and also a medium to exhibit their technical skills.”

Bhoomika Vihar director Shilpi Singh speaks at the inauguration of the gender cell at AN College. Picture by Ranjeet Kumar Dey

Tech fun

Technika ’14 — the sixth annual technical festival of Birla Institute of Technology, Patna, began on October 25 — with a workshop on ethical hacking and cyber security.

Vineet Kumar, chief technical officer, Cyber Research Defence Centre, Jharkhand, addressed the session. He spoke about cyber security and speech encryption. Around 200 students attended the workshop.

BIT-Patna director S.L. Gupta encouraged the organising team and wished them best for the future

Apart from the hosts, students from BIT-Deoghar, Cybotech, Gaya College and Bhagalpur College took part in the event.

Cancer march

All India Institute of Medical Sciences, Patna, organised “Pink Walk” — a march to spread awareness about breast cancer in collaboration with Indian Medical Association, Society of Oncology and Cancer Awareness Society.

Students from city schools such as Notre Dame Academy and St Joseph’s High School and institutes like Sri Arvind Mahila College took part in the march on October 25 that began at the IMA building and ended at Kargil Chowk.

AIIMS-Patna director G.K. Singh, along with other doctors like A.A. Hai, T.P. Sinha and V.P. Singh, also took part in the march. Singh said: “Breast cancer is still the most common form of the disease. More such awareness programmes need to be organised.”

Gender cell

In a bid to sensitise college students on gender issues, a cell was set up at the AN College.

A joint initiative of the college’s NSS wing and non-government organisation Bhoomika Vihar, the cell was inaugurated October 25 by college principal Haridwar Singh. He said: “The University Grants Commission recently issued a circular to all universities asking the institutions to form a gender cell, after the Delhi rape case.”

The cell would organise awareness programmes and also deal with cases of sexual harassment on campus. Shilpi Singh, director, Bhoomika Vihar, who attended the inauguration, said: “We shall support the college in this initiative.”