E-Paper
St Stephen’s students raise concerns over fee, matter to be raised in governing body
New Delhi:
New Delhi:
Second and third-year class representatives at St Stephen’s College have written to the governing body over students being charged for electricity, water, IT, and library fee among other things despite non-usage of these facilities this semester.
According to the students, the college on November 2 released the semester term bill, which said third-year hostellers would have to pay Rs 24,292 for this semester, including rent fine, for failing to vacate their rooms.
The fee would come down to Rs 18,592 if the rent fine was exempted, students said. A third-year student, who is a day scholar, would have to pay Rs 18,580 this semester.
Requesting anonymity, a signatory to the letter, said, “The hike in fee isn’t much but we had to raise our voices for being asked to pay for services not being used by us during the pandemic. Further, our college fee is much higher than other DU colleges and the administration needs to be transparent about where the money is being used.”
In the letter sent to the governing body, students wrote, “Students have been charged for the following facilities despite non-usage this semester: Rs 2,400 for electricity and water fee, Rs 2,000 for internet resource centre and information technology (hiked from Rs 1,200 in the previous semester), and Rs 900 for library fee.”
“Newly admitted students have been charged on many services which they will not be able to avail anytime soon. We request if a roll-back of fee on these heads be made possible or an assured refund at a later stage for students.”
Nandita Narain, elected teacher representative on the governing body, said, “The teacher representatives in GB have been raising the issue of high fees. A meeting of the college governing body is scheduled for Thursday and I will raise this issue in the meeting. The students are perturbed about the term bill and I have written to the governing body on it.”
Despite repeated requests, principal John Varghese and governing body chairperson Bishop Warris Masih did not comment on the matter.
In the letter, students alleged the college has not provided any institutional support for online teaching-learning. “To date, we have not observed institutional support for online classes, apart from providing ad-hoc professors with institutional IDs to access GSuite, (freely accessible for educational institutions). Our professors have been using personal Zoom subscriptions or free versions of softwares. Professors and students have been incurring high costs for internet connections and devices. Hence, we are of the understanding that online education cannot be cited as a justification for an enhanced IRC fee, as it does not appear that any hardware, software or training support has been provided so far,” students wrote in the letter.
The students have asked for an extension of the deadline for payment of fee and concessions on a case-to-case basis due to the Covid-19 pandemic and the subsequent economic impact on families. They raised questions on the Establishment Fee component which charges students Rs 9,600 per semester “without any transparency around its use.”
