Lucknow, Aug. 5: IIT Kanpur has asked the parents of new students not to provide them with laptops at least in the first year. It says this encourages “web addiction” which adds to stress and has been identified as a key reason for campus suicides.
The idea was suggested by a committee set up to recommend prevention measures last December after the campus witnessed seven suicides in four years.
Many students surf the Internet through the night, registrar S.S. Kashalkar told The Telegraph. “When they attend classes the next morning, they are fatigued by lack of sleep and fail to concentrate on their studies. This leads to additional stress,” he said.
The authorities clarified they were not “banning” laptops in hostels; they had merely made a request to the parents at a meeting last month after the fresh batch of first-year students joined the campus.
“The response has been good,” said dean A.K. Ghose.
Many students, though, argue that web surfing is a means of relaxation after a hard day’s academic activity.
“It’s a knee-jerk reaction from the authorities. I believe the core problem behind the suicides is the crushing burden of the curriculum and the examination system,” a second-year mechanical engineering student said.
Institute director S.G. Dhande had announced last month that the number of exams per six-month semester would be cut down from three to two.
Kashalkar said that if a student needs a computer to study, he is free to use one through the day at the institute’s computer centres. “What we want to stop urgently is the surfing of irrelevant websites, indulgence in gossipy chat rooms, and playing of interactive games on the Internet,” he said.
“We want to restrict laptop use till the first year. After that, the students become more mature.”
IIT Delhi director Prof Surendra Prasad agreed that late-night web surfing could make students sleepy during classes and harm concentration. “At IIT Delhi, we cut the Internet connection from 1am to 6am so that the students will sleep,” he said. So do IIT Guwahati and IIT Bombay.
Azizuddin Khan, psychology professor at IIT Bombay, though, said that denying laptops would have a limited role in checking suicides. He argued that student stress is a result of many factors, such as their lack of social interaction and high level of aspiration that sometimes outstrips their abilities.
Besides, he said, students can access the Net through their mobile phones even if they are denied laptops.
To improve interaction and prevent suicides, the IIT Kanpur committee had recommended doing away with single-seat hostel rooms and making room-sharing mandatory. This, however, has been kept pending because of strong student opposition.
IIT Kanpur, however, believes that too much interaction or prolonged conversations with friends outside the campus can distract students from their studies and add to stress. It is trying to find ways of persuading the students to limit their cellphone use.
Among the committee’s other recommendations are strengthening of the counselling centres and a review of the examination and gradation system.
