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.

Every year, at NLSIU’s Convocation, a gold medal is handed out to the best graduating Girl Student of the year. This is in addition to the medals handed out to the top ranked students. This affirmative action medal is a vestige of a time when women were scarcely even seen on the rolls in higher education, let alone seen performing exceedingly well. While most avenues remain a ‘Man’s World’ even today, we thought it is worth asking – is academic performance at NLS still correlated to having the coveted Y chromosome?

The Hard Facts

A recent Census of the undergraduate population conducted by a team at NLS strongly indicates that it is not the case. The data indicates that women overwhelmingly outperform men in academics- 72% of all 6 pointers in NLS currently are women while almost 70% of all students with CGPA below 4 are men. These results are not surprising – in fact, studies conducted across the world, both among schools and college students are consistent in this observation. Women, who were not allowed an education some 100 years ago, are now doing better than men. Now even though this is finally a stereotype we can get behind, unlike ‘the wheels’ because we can’t drive, there is still a need to examine this connection especially in an Indian context where it has rarely been attempted before. So we did what Spadika does best. We did a survey.

We hypothesized that this polarization of grades is probably because women work harder for exams, submit projects on time and are more likely to be attentive and take notes in class. And the results seemed to suggest the same. Of the 145 undergraduate students (79 women and 66 men) who filled the survey, more than 70% of the women said they submit projects on time, while less than half of the men said they do the same. As one male student interviewed put it, “It’s one day after deadline and I’ve done zero words in both projects.” There were also zero women who said they submit projects on last-last day (compared to 10% of men). The same trend exists with studying for exams and taking notes in class where women display a lot more diligence than men. Moreover, this is something they’ve carried on from their school life, where a much larger number of women claim to have been toppers in school as well. So what drives them to work so hard and take academics more seriously?

Playing it safe

For many it’s just the way they’ve been brought up. As Ritika Ajitsaria, a third year student says, “Girls are just taught to be more careful and are less prone to taking risks because of the upbringing they have.” This is a common sentiment where women feel that they have more social pressure to be ‘proper’ and disciplined which contributes to their approach towards academics. Gopika Murthy, a top-ranked student from the fifth year says, “When girls are brought up being told that they must be responsible, sincere and think of the consequences of all of their actions, it seeps into all aspects, including academics. I learnt early on that I was better at academics more than in other things, and to remain good at it, I work hard.” This pressure to perform is not just self-imposed; parents tend to place greater importance on the academic performance of girls as well. On a scale of 1-5, a significantly higher number of women claimed that academic performance is highly (4-5) important to their parents. These results appear counter-intuitive, because one would expect that in a patriarchal society, the academic performance of future baby-makers should not matter much. Perhaps, for parents whose children are studying at an infamously ‘liberal’ university far away from home, expecting academic performance is merely another form of making their children conform and ‘behave’.

However, an even more telling reason behind the difference in grades seems to be the tendency for women to be risk averse. Studies conducted all over the world have been conclusive in showing that women are generally less likely to take risks, probably due to the consequences being much worse for them. And the opposite also rings true. A student, who does not wish to be named, attributes his taking such risks for the adrenaline rush that he gets when he knows that he needs to submit a project in the next three hours. Certainly, upbringing has a lot to do with this, but it also suggests that there is generally more at stake for women for them to give everything up for a shot of adrenaline. For many women, maybe more so in India, a higher education might still not be an entitlement, and they still have to fight to get here. “I’ve definitely had to face more obstacles to come here,” says Ritika, “In terms of leaving the city, going to places to give entrance exams, going to coaching centers.” This is reiterated by an observation made by Mohnish Mathew, a second year student, who recalls, how some brilliant girls in his batch back in school were all sent to a particular college in the same city because their parents didn’t want them to leave even though quite a few of them were from affluent families. “They could have done excellent things at places like Shriram (SRCC), they got the percentage, they got the 98, but their parents didn’t really encourage them.” So for women who do make it, college might not be something they can take for granted.

Great Expectations

For other women, this need to prove themselves goes into fighting societal expectations. Madhavi Singh, the designated note taker for nearly two years in a row now, acknowledges that somewhere in the back of her mind she wants to ensure that ten-fifteen years down the line, her husband should not be in the position to tell her to give up her job to take care of a baby. In society, there are still skewed expectations from women to sacrifice their careers for their children, a pressure it is safe to say no man faces. “I don’t want to be in a position where I’m working harder than most people in my batch and fifteen years later in an alumni meet they are ahead of me because I was busy for three years taking care of my children.” She admits to wondering sometimes why she’s working so hard if at the end of the day she’s expected to give up her career after marriage. “It’s my nightmare,” she adds. She’s not alone in harbouring this fear. For other women, it might be the desire to establish themselves before they are expected to settle-down, or to ensure that they are doing well enough that marriage is not the only alternative available to them.

What Madhavi also seems to imply is that it is much easier for men to build successful careers than it is for women. As one student puts it, “Guys have male role models in college and outside who have succeeded despite being bad at academics.” An anonymous fifth year student says, “I grew up with the firm belief that there are no limits on what I can achieve, and this is something I still believe. Perhaps this contributes to me slacking off with respect to projects and exams more than others.” Interestingly, this student is a woman which makes it clear that women aren’t immune to developing such a sense of entitlement and it has more to do with how one has been socialized. However, as things stand now, a variety of reasons stand in the way of women in general feeling as entitled to success as men, such as expectations imposed by families,the presence of the glass ceiling and fewer career interruptions for men.

Chill scenes in MHOR

Does this sense of entitlement translate only to slacking off in the realm of academics? The data seems to suggest so. On average, more men than women participate in moots and debates and sports. Moreover, a casual glance at the Debate Noticeboard Facebook group reveals that men spend more time practicing their debating than women. We see more men than women wanting to practice a few days before project submissions or a week before exams. Of the people surveyed, more men also claim to privilege extra curricular activities even at the expense of academics. Therefore, clearly, for more men it is not aversion to hard work in general but just towards academics.

Several respondents were also of the opinion that the environment in the MHOR needs to be taken into account. On a scale of 5, a significantly higher number of the women surveyed rated their hostel’s conduciveness to studying at 4 or 5 as compared to men. This is not just due to the higher access to a variety of ‘distractions’ but also to attitudes passed down through seniors and peers creating the pervasive notion of Chill. Chill, which has been described as a “garbage virtue which will destroy the species” requires you to be laid back, not care too much about stuff lest you look uncool, and start your projects as late as you can so you can boast about it later. Perhaps such attitudes are also found among women, but for women, as the data indicates there is also higher peer pressure to perform well in academics which perhaps functions as the opposite of Chill.

Before you say “Not all men…,” we will say it ourselves: Not all men submit projects on last last day (almost 50% of our male respondents said they submit on time), not all men start studying the night before the exam (the only respondent who said he started studying more than 14 days before the exam was male), not all men subscribe to the ideal of Chill. We also acknowledge that our conclusions can possibly be disproved with more data. However, looking at the worldwide trend of women outperforming men in academics, we appeal to the Vice-Chancellor to institute a Best Male Student award because in the academic rat race, men are the real victims.

It took me a while to warm up to law school, sometimes, I’m not sure it has happened yet. Before you start calling me anti-social, let me point out out I wasn’t alone. A lot of my friends felt this way … girls, that is. All the boys we know seemed to be enamored by this place in a manner I could not understand. I still can’t, but now I know that there is a very rational explanation for this: girls and boys simply do not experience law school the same way.

This has nothing to do with boys and girls themselves, and everything to do with the way we have been divided into MHORs and WHORs (of course). The MHORs, with their complete seclusion from campus near the brilliant football field, which us WHORs aren’t allowed to enter for some obscure reason, lead a life that most of us at the girls hostel wouldn’t even understand.

I’ll start with the most obvious: the terrace culture. It could be defined as the habit of gathering at safe spaces, i.e. the hostel terraces at night. People gather in small or large numbers to live the not-sober life, go through existential crises and very often take decisions which may have anywhere between medium to large impact on their lives. This is a part of every MHORs life. An average MHORs story would often begin with the line “So last night on the terrace…” These terraces are the perfect environments to have events ranging from mind-numbingly stupid things like “ulta Himalaya/Ganga/Cauvery” to interesting initiatives like Student Bar Debates or the NLS Film Society. They are safe havens which have been granted an implicit exemption from the Gestapo because after all, everybody as someone put it, needs their orgies. Another striking thing about the terrace culture is that only men take part in it. Before you start getting defensive about this, we are not blaming men for this, we are simply pointing out the distinction. The reasons may be plenty but the reality is clear. There is simply no terrace culture in any of the women hostels. In fact, there is practically no intermingling between the batches, which was one of the very purposes of having hostels with people across batches. Yet sadly, us WHORs do not believe in leaving our comfort zones and meeting people who aren’t already our friends. What these empty terraces depict is the lack of any discourse taking place among the women of this college and sharing of ideas and initiatives in all fields across law school.

Last year, when there was a major outcry out against SDGM during SF there was a blatant lack of girls from the conversation. The insensitivity with which girls were banned from the field in the night was something most of us were extremely slighted by. Yet there were hardly any emails sent by women expressing their disappointment with the way we were being treated. The lack of women in the debating circle is also a testament of this lack of culture to collectively meet and discuss, think, and evaluate the world and our lives. Further, the deserted terraces atop WHOR have missed out on the strong bonds that the ones above MHOR have fostered across generations. Maybe it also often results in the formation of fault lines drawn between men and women of a batch, as is present in a certain senior batch. There can possibly be no positive result of that and we must make an active attempt to prevent such a thing from happening.

There are numerous other things which result in MHORs and WHORs leading different lives. One example is the fact that almost no one from the woman’s hostel has a car. Going out for a drive at 2AM and witnessing BU in all its moonlit glory is part of law school for many members of MHOR. Yet for most women on campus, this along with other such experiences, is unthinkable. The kind of autonomy that men in our campus have is significantly higher than that given to women, which inevitably affects the kind of experiences we have in law school. This becomes a problem because women here are deprived of these experiences that allow men to build a sense of autonomy, confidence and self-sufficiency, all of which are essential to become holistic individuals in modern society. I don’t mean to apportion blame to anyone in this article. Of course, no one is preventing us from exploring the aspects of life I have previously mentioned. I am simply commenting on the situation and the reality as it stands.

I recognise that fixing this is hard in some circumstances. After all, law school is a part of a larger society and the systemic problems of our society, naturally spill over here as well. However, the fact that this is the situation even in an institution such as law school, with students as liberal as they are or claim to be, is a failure at some level, on our part.

There are numerous other examples, which result into MHORs and WHORs leading completely different lives, which often amounts to MHORs and WHORs being different people. These differences must be put to an end to develop an environment that is significantly more inclusive and doesn’t result in the systemic backwardness of one class of people. After all, women need their orgies too.