Photo: Subhendu Chaki

It was a busy morning early last week in Calcutta’s College Street. Lined with bookshops crowded with browsing students, the street looked its normal, chaotic self ? milling with people, and jammed with vehicles.

Something seemed amiss outside Presidency College, though. Its wrought-iron gates were open a crack, barely enough for a person to squeeze in. And there were men in uniform checking the IDs of students before letting them in. Outsiders without appointments were not being allowed in. The 188-year-old institution ? which had its gates wide open to the public even two weeks earlier ? had suddenly become a fortress.

There was a good reason for the beefed-up security. A second-year sociology student had been molested. The incident preceded a similar case at the Shyamaprasad College in south Calcutta, where a fresher was sexually assaulted in public.

Campuses are increasingly becoming unsafe for girls in most cities and Calcutta is no exception. In Delhi, a young student was raped just outside her college ? the Maulana Azad Medical College ? in central Delhi nearly three years ago. Students often complain about incidents of molestation in DU, the South Campus and the Jawaharlal Nehru University. A student of Ramjas College in DU says there is a regular police patrol during the day, extended into the evening.

The authorities seem to have woken up to the fact that campuses are no longer safe. At Presidency, security has been beefed up like never before. Students have been asked not to use the rear gate and clear up before dark. A playground that was occupied by people from a nearby slum has been “cleansed” with the help of the police. Tea-sellers have been banned from the campus and those waiting to pick up their children from a neighbouring school have been asked to stay away from the girls’ common room.

Shyamaprasad College has private security in the building and additional guards have been posted on the second floor where the July 28 molestation took place. At Jadavpur University (JU) in south Calcutta, where there have been several instances of people trying to break into the girls’ hostels, there is increasing concern about the safety of women. “This is a matter of concern but a solution is not easy to work out. Who do you stop and how do you define outsiders? People come to colleges to enquire, for admissions and to meet students,” says Subrata Pal, head of the department of biotechnology at JU.

Pal admits that the security system at the university is “deficient”. Security at Presidency College, too, has always been lax. “The girls were very jittery after the incident. That you are not safe even within the campus is not a pleasant thought,” says second-year political science student and Presidency College constituency representative Sayantan Saha Roy. “Things have improved but we need the securitymen to be posted permanently. Had the security been there that day, this could have been prevented.”

But the issue goes beyond hiring private watchmen to guard a college. In Bangalore’s St Joseph’s College, for instance, there is a focus on getting students ? seniors and freshmen ? to interact with each other and build a strong personal rapport. “The idea is to create a friendly atmosphere in college. This will root out potential troublemakers,” says K.K. Cherian, registrar, St Joseph’s College.

In Calcutta, though, the focus right now is on making citadels out of campuses. “Over the last few years we have been trying to drive out outsiders from the playground. But they keep coming back. There has been no support for us from any quarters,” complains Professor Subhas Chakrabarty of Presidency. Another senior teacher describes the insecurity as a sign of the authorities’ callousness. “Have you ever heard of outsiders infiltrating the St Xavier’s campus?” he asks.

All, however, is not well at St Xavier’s either. Principal P.C. Mathew admits that the college on Park Street is no longer impenetrable. “A few years ago, a man slipped into our campus and started shedding his clothes near the girls’ common room. There have been a few other incidents as well but by and large these are skirmishes.”

Curiously, like the principal of Delhi’s Kirori Mal College, who came under considerable flak last month for trying to link crimes against women with the clothes they wore, Calcutta’s educational authorities seem to think that the young’s fashion trends are related to the spurt in molestation cases.

“It has got a lot to do with the way youngsters dress up these days,” says Mathew. His opinion is echoed by Shyamaprasad College principal Gyanankur Goswami. “There has been a general cultural decadence, thanks to the MTV and Bollywood culture. Youngsters are falling prey. So these (incidents) will keep happening,” he says.

Students are not ready to accept this. “This is like putting the blame on the girl who has been molested ? which is ridiculous,” retorts Priyadarshini Sen, a third-year history student at Presidency.

Psychiatrist Aniruddha Deb has a different take on this new menace. “With society getting more permissive, there is a growing desperation among a section of society. They don’t think it is bad to molest a girl and what is worse is that they often get away with it,” he says.“But I don’t subscribe to the view that youngsters’ behaviour has changed so much that it instigates molestation.”

But even students admit that the innocence of life on campus is fast disappearing. “It started with drugs and now with molestors lurking around the campus, the change is almost complete,” says biotechnology student Joydeep Sen. And it’s being reflected in students’ attitudes, with many stressing that they are always in a state of apprehension.

“Who knows what’s going to happen tomorrow?” says Anneysha Chowdhury, a third year history student at Presidency. “But let’s not run away, no matter how difficult it gets.” The campus, after all, has a spirit to live up to.

(With additional reporting by Varuna Verma in Bangalore and Anirban Das Mahapatra in New Delhi)