The national University Grants Commission (UGC) is planning to ask all university vice-chancellors to set up monitoring committees to ensure that women’s safety and gender sensitivity measures are followed in campuses across the country. “Each committee could comprise men and women, members of the teaching staff, administration as well as students,” UGC chairperson Ved Prakash said, speaking at the University of Mumbai’s Kalina campus on Saturday, celebrated as ‘youth day’.

Prakash was speaking in the context of the gang-rape and brutalisation of a 23-year-old student in New Delhi last month, leading to the woman’s death two weeks later.

In the wake of that incident, the UGC set up a task force on January 7 to review campus safety arrangements.

The task force will now visit campuses to evaluate these arrangements before submitting a report on possible improvements and gender sensitivity programmes, by mid-March.

“We are all ashamed of what happened,” Prakash said, responding to a question from a student. “We have written to all vice-chancellors asking for two things: the physical safety of students and a change in mindsets and attitudes.”

Prakash added that modules on gender sensitisation in the curriculum would be necessary for such a change in mindset.