The students’ senate of IIEST, Shibpur, has written to the director informing him that they want the institute to start in-person classes and exams from January.
The senate, which represents all students on the campus, said they were looking forward to a reopening for at least the BTech third-year and fourth-year students.
“Students are expected to get fully vaccinated by the end of December,” the senate has written to the director.
The senate has pointed out in the letter that students don’t want to come to the campus now as their classes for the odd semester (July to December) on online platforms are almost over and they are due to write the exams shortly.
An official of the institute said that although IIEST is under the Union education ministry, norms under the Disaster Mitigation Act entail that the local government’s (state government) decision on reopening can be implemented as well.
The letter from the senate states: “Students also want to attend the next semester in full offline mode (classes, exams as well as laboratories) from the beginning of the semester… (at least UG 3rd year and 4th year students). Students are also expected to get fully vaccinated by the end of December.”
Harshvardhan Singh, the general secretary of the students’ union said they had suggested offline classes for the BTech third-year and fourth-year students, considering the accommodation problem.
“In our hostels, four to five students stay in each room. But it won’t be proper to follow the practice amid Covid because maintaining physical distancing is a must. So if the institute starts with third and fourth-year students, physical distancing norms can be maintained,” he said.
“Besides, we want the outgoing batch to be given priority,” he said.
The IIEST director, Parthasarathi Chakrabarti, had in November 2020 appealed to the education ministry for immediate sanction of funds for building hostels. The work is in progress, said an official.
“We want to resume on-campus academic activities from November 16 following the advisory issued by the state government. But before that, we want to take the opinion of students,” said Debabrata Majumder, dean of students.
The institute will start recalling final-year students of the MTech programme from November 4.
An IIEST official said they wanted to resume in-person classes for students of all years in keeping with the state government’s advisory, as it is not feasible to continue with online and offline classes at the same time because of infrastructure shortcomings.
“But issues like hostel accommodation will have to be resolved first. Students will also hold more discussions among themselves on what could be the way forward,” he said.
The Covid-19 taskforce of the IIM-Calcutta will meet this week to take a call on resumption of off-line classes in view of the state government’s advisory, said an IIM-C official.
