On 21st July, 2016, The Student Bar Association in coordination with a couple of students will be conducting a survey asking you for your opinion on the creation of gender neutral private spaces on campus. What we are proposing is to allow girls to enter MHOR during specified visiting hours.
There is a lack of gender neutral spaces on campus which often affects both men and women. For instance, the football field is inaccessible to women post 6pm. The common room is the only space for people of both sexes to hang out together. Boys from Himalaya have for the last one year had to go all the way to the boys’ hostel for every meal, despite the fact that the girls’ mess is nearer. These archaic notions of physical separation of the two sexes even in the face of inconvenience and blatant sexism, is problematic. When asked why a common mess was an issue, one of the lines of reasoning provided by the administration was that it could lead to rapes.
The proposal for visiting hours in the boys’ hostel is only one of a series of proposals for more gender neutral spaces on campus which includes a common mess, access for girls to the football field, similar gate timings for women and men, etc.
We recognise that this is a huge change, something that’s never been seriously considered in our time here. And with that comes a lot of apprehension. This particular move, despite its benefits, will disproportionately affect members of MHOR, who are suddenly being asked to open their hostels to women which must seem like an intrusion of sorts.
We’d like to address a couple of concerns we’ve come across before the survey is conducted tomorrow.
– Your hostels will not be teeming with women overnight who will be policing or checking your behaviour. Even if by some miracle (that’s what it’s going to take) the admin does allow this, it’s going to take a while for girls to freely enter MHOR (since our division goes deeper than separate hostels) and it’s going to be a gradual process where you’ll have enough time to get comfortable with the idea of women in your personal spaces.
– You aren’t going to be forced to hear your roommates and people in the hostel having sex all the time. People in college aren’t going to suddenly become insanely attracted to each other, just because they have a room. Of course your roommate might ask you to leave the room sometimes, but you might too someday. More than that, it’s not going to be something you’d want to deny your roommate once in a while and won’t radically affect life as it is. Besides this proposal, despite the fact that people have been calling it conjugal rights, is not about sex. While this will surely benefit couples who don’t have to go to places like Sundarbans or the New Acad., at the risk of being photographed or groped. It also gives a space for men and women to just hang out, watch a movie without having to rely on the common room which is most of the time inaccessible because someone else has already occupied it. And we doubt a bunch of girls entering the MHOR for a couple of hours can make it noisier than it already is.
– You won’t be able to roam around shirtless all the time. Okay we admit, this might be true if you are uncomfortable with women seeing your body (so basically not you Amati). But to put things in perspective this will just be for a few hours on some specified days of the week. In light of the benefits and the fact that we are all used to being fully clothed at home most of the times, it’s not that difficult to get used to.
– Why is it only residents of MHOR who have to compromise and let go of their private spaces? Isn’t it hypocrisy, especially considering first year boys were disallowed from eating in the WHOR mess due to a few isolated complaints? We completely agree with you. We’d all like to see a day when the “No Men Beyond this Point” sign is removed. While it might seem that this proposal is placing women’s conception of privacy above that of any member of the MHOR who may have the same, we think the administration would be much more open to opening the MHOR to women for a few hours than letting men enter the WHOR for reasons that do presume certain things about women and men. (For instance, currently hostel rule allow women to enter MHOR with written permission from the chief warden, but not vice versa). To clarify, we stand for complete open access without any presumptive paternalism on the part of the administration. But we believe that opening the MHOR could be a first step in a process that would culminate in the WHOR doing the same. It is also easier supported as this is the system adopted by various other colleges in India and thus less controversial.
– Making out is not essential and does not warrant a protest. This is not simply about making out. Something one may notice in Law School is that the men are much closer to the men and the women closer to the women. It is not without exception, as nothing is, but to a large extent there is a divide. One of the biggest reasons for this is the lack of interaction between the two. Currently there is class, and the library, but these are places one usually goes to with a specific purpose. We make friends with people we can relate to and form most of our closest bonds chilling in the hostel. The fact that the two sexes do not casually meet in the place as close to home as one gets in law school, perpetuates a system where the guys stay close to the guys and vice versa. If we could sit back and argue about the most random things with the other sex in the comfort of my room, it’s unlikely we wouldn’t be close in general, even as friends.
– Your parents won’t like it. Once again, the way society works, parents are going to be a lot more reluctant to let boy’s enter the girls hostel than vice versa. Given that this model has worked in colleges like IIT Bombay without parental issue, it seems unlikely that they’ll raise a hue and cry. Having said that however, if you feel that your parents would not have sent you to college even with this specific move, we can perhaps modify it to exclude first years (on the same rationale as we impose room-check on them) which might help with the parents.
At the end of the day, it’s your campus and your hostels and we can only request you to give it some serious thought and vote in favour of this move. If you have any other concerns do let us know through the survey so we can address them before we take it to the admin.
We know that even those of you who support this cause, think it’s probably impossible and we should ask for something smaller. But isn’t that the point of NLS. Don’t we fancy ourselves as pioneers of liberal values? Shouldn’t our campus be more progressive and inclusive to reflect that? And if that is a farce, shouldn’t we force the admin to openly acknowledge their hypocrisy instead of letting them get away with it? We think yes. Also realise that if we make enough noise about this at least they’ll be forced to consider that there is a problem which won’t just go away if they continue to ignore it. Maybe they will then allow equal access to the field or make more common (if not private) spaces. But let that not stop us from asking for something that is completely reasonable and even necessary.
Finally, let’s not forget that the starting point for this demand was that a couple was photographed behind Sundarbans. Let’s not forget that people have been groped, watched and ‘caught’ multiple times in the past. Up until now the admin has only dealt with individual complaints and the incidents have subsequently repeated themselves at our cost. It’s time we stop allowing them to be complacent about our safety and take matters into our own hands.
Please do mail SBA or any of us individually if you have any concerns.
Love,
The Open Hostels Movement.
]]>This article was written by Aditya Mehta (Batch of 2018)
The article’s general tone against those opposing change may or may not have to do with those opposing the coupon system. The author may or may not be biased as he is a member of Mess Comm. Any resemblance to a person or argument raised with regard to the coupon system is deliberate and to be taken in jest and/or with offence depending on whether the author can outrun you. All strawmanning is also deliberate and is intended to cause frustration.
It’s been about a year since it was discovered that cars can be made to fly pretty easily if you replace petrol with a mixture of various difficult-to-spell chemicals (the easiest of which is xerocanthiusphatimoxide). Not only could they now move in the air reducing traffic, but also at four times the speed petrol offered. Various associated benefits were also found such as lower environmental harm, noise pollution being removed from where the population resides and allowing people to often say with more conviction that they’re “on top of the world”.
But a recent government circular has banned the use of these cars; only vehicles that have a “worthy of flying” certificate will be permitted to fly. The criterion for the certificate being granted includes having wings or blades, a pilot with specific qualifications, cramped seats and “a general perception that the vehicle is not a car”. It goes on to specify, so as to prevent confusion, that parachutes, gliders and the mentally unstable who underestimate gravity while jumping off a building will not be prosecuted for an attempt to violate the law.
The government did not cite any reasons for its ban, the benefits mentioned earlier notwithstanding. However, three protest groups that form a prominent vote bank would likely have influenced this decision.
There were those who’d plastered “inconvenience” in black paint all over the walls of the transport ministry. They’d have to buy the complex chemical from petrol pumps in cans and not use the usual straight-into-the-tank pipes, which threw their well ordered lives into complete disarray. The cars take off on turning the keys, which made them question both whether the car was on and whether their lives served any purpose. If they forgot to buy fuel, they were stranded without their personal transport for an entire journey, which caused more mental agony than your average chemotherapy session.
Then there was them hitchhikers, of course. They’d always stuck their thumb out for a lift and never planned on driving so as to pay back their social dues. Suddenly it was unlikely their thumbs would be seen from a 1000 feet above the ground unless they bought jet packs, which they couldn’t because not buying is what defines them in the first place. So one day the transport ministry found them standing outside their office (mis)quoting political scientists on the duties of the state and those strange creatures that paid for things.
Finally, but possibly the most vociferous of the lot, were the oldies. Their hair had turned gray in cars and, by their dentures, cars would stay on the ground until their last breath. Their reasons sometimes overlapped with the above groups, but their distinct identity stems from the fact that they rarely confined themselves to reasoned debate. Rhetoric and flourish are what defined them. So if one flying car one day slowed down, it was photographed, advertised and analysed for 657 times longer than it would take them to conform to the system. It didn’t matter that slow cars had similar, and greater, problems. Only those concerned with flying cars were to be wept over. And God knows those tears were photographed too.
The ministry is considering holding a poll soon. Let’s hope I can keep my faith in democracy at the end of it, and for once we find that the bureaucracy got it right. •