Rohan of All India Bakchod (AIB) recently tweeted about his harrowing experience at college when he was harassed by a professor.
These stories, however, are not stray incidents.
@mojorojo my brother is facing the same and the prof has the audacity to say 'tera paper to maine khud nikalvaya hai taki fail karva saku'
— Melanie (@jellywitch) August 16, 2016
@mojorojo I was asked to sit in the library once (alone) till midnight as punishment because I was hanging out in the premises beyond 4 pm.
— NavD (@NavdhaD) August 16, 2016
@mojorojo This is during the no cellphone era, I was 17 & they didnt let me call home. My fam went berserk looking for me. Rest is history.
— NavD (@NavdhaD) August 16, 2016
@mojorojo In one case, not even kidding, a prof gave a friend's assignment zero saying "I don't like your face". Top engg college in Pune.
— Gaurav Sabnis (@gauravsabnis) August 16, 2016
@mojorojo He laughs about it now because he eventually survived, went on to bigger things. But I remember those weeks when he was suicidal.
— Gaurav Sabnis (@gauravsabnis) August 16, 2016
@mojorojo my relative dropped out of engg due to a horrible teacher, also hid the fact for 2years out of fear.Such teachers are unforgivable
— Sushima Shekar (@amas32) August 16, 2016
@mojorojo I didn't attend a class in my final year because of a teacher. He was a bullied and humiliated anyone who didn't know the answer.
— Trixie Pereira (@Trixie_Pereira) August 16, 2016
@mojorojo pissed of the HoD in the TY due to a very genuine tech glitch. She took it out on me the whole year.
— Appy (@appynessalways) August 16, 2016
@mojorojo Medschool is even worse.Eccentricity is the norm and you need to brownnose a ton of people to pass.
— Sharath Gopal (@Sharathgpl) August 16, 2016
@mojorojo in our college, there was a professor who would fail students on purpose and then demand 5k to pass students.
— Rajjo (@Rajat015) August 16, 2016
While most students remember their college life with fondness, Kavya S*, who went to an Arts college in Chennai, describes it as a “bad period”. A professor’s dislike for her transformed Kavya’s pursuit for a Master’s degree into a long episode of psychological and mental harassment.
Kavya speculates that the professor may have found her arrogant and rebellious. However, it still didn’t justify her preventing Kavya from writing her papers or dismissing her work in front of external evaluators. She also said nasty, unprofessional things about Kavya in the staff room as the latter found out.
“I felt helpless and mostly depressed. And there was pressure from my family to complete my formal education,” she now recollects.
Complaints to the principal bore no results and the harassment continued. One and a half years later, she quit her two-year Master’s course.
While corporal punishment in schools is an oft debated subject, an issue that often goes unnoticed is the harassment that older students face in higher institutes of education.
This type of abuse and even bullying is perpetrated not by fellow students, but by teachers.
Most students do not protest because teachers wield significant power over them - the power to grade them.
A. Mangai, theatre personality and academician, says that live teaching is a profession that gives enormous power to the teacher. And it takes long for teachers to understand how to use the power in a way which does not adversely affect the students.
College-going students, she explains, are in their late teens or early twenties, those who have just made the transition from school to college. And they expect to be treated like adults with respect. Their minds are still evolving and teaching plays with the minds of students.
“There's a desperate need for teachers to be sensitive. We work in a rocket era and follow a lifestyle which gives no time to empathise with fellow human beings. Students should certainly let their teachers know when they are hurt. They should speak to the teacher concerned and this culture needs to be brought in,” she states.
23-year-old Pallavi Dewan recalls how while pursuing her bachelor’s course from Delhi University, one of her teachers took a dislike to her and tampered with her grades. After failing her twice in her internals and humiliating her in front of the class, she said she would ensure that she did not pass her external exams.
"I got so scared and really thought I won’t be able to make it. I studied very hard and almost topped the externals. It was then that I realised that what I had done in my internals wasn't all wrong and that she just didn't pass me," says Pallavi. (External papers are marked centrally at Delhi University and not necessarily by internal college teachers.)
While such incidents do occur, Dr Jayanthini, a Chennai-based psychiatrist, is cautious about painting the entire teaching community with the same brush.
Teachers need to have some control over students to maintain discipline, she says, but at times they can become biased for a number of reasons.
Dr Jayanthini says that sometimes, the issue can be cordially solved by effective communication between parents and teachers. However, at other times, the only solution is to remove the person from the “emotionally abusive situation”. She gives the example of two students who had to discontinue their course because of harassment from their guide.
Incidents such as these occur across the country.
Studying in a reputed school in Chandigarh, Ayush recalls, “"My teacher said that I talk so much that I was like a girl. I didn't know then that she meant this as an insult. The whole class started laughing. That day I went to the balcony outside class and cried.”
But the teacher did not stop there. She called him “Ayushi” when she was distributing test papers and notebooks a few times, much to the amusement of the class.
"When a teacher, who's supposed to protect you from this sort of harassment, does it herself, what do you do? I felt like I had no one to turn to," Ayush says.
@mojorojo my teacher marked me absent because apparently the time I took between "Present" and "Ma'am" was too much.
— Jawad (@jawad_khan1998) August 16, 2016
@mojorojo I faced simlar situation in my school days.My maths teacher just couldn't see my face. 1/n
— Vipul Kaushik (@VipulKaushik85) August 16, 2016
@mojorojo If not for a solving a que,he'd beat me for not having my nails trimmed or long hairNever left a chance to publicly ridicule me2/n
— Vipul Kaushik (@VipulKaushik85) August 16, 2016
@mojorojo I was made to kneel in front of my class for a week coz I couldn't get my diary signed by my Dad, who was still in Saudi
— Ejaz Wangde (@ejazw) August 16, 2016
@mojorojo I know of this lecturer who threatened students openly that he'll ruin their careers, he did.
— Anusha Rao (@ABeautifulDawn) August 16, 2016
@mojorojo not just colleges, schools too. One teacher did not like me at all. I could sense it and used to stay away from her.
— Medha Sengupta (@thebongette) August 16, 2016
Some students have no other option than to bear such harassment, others are forced to give up. Quitting, however, does not always mean failing.
It has been a few years since Kavya quit college. She has been working all this while and is once again planning to get her Master's degree. Only this time, she will pursue it from another college. “In fact, not in India at all,” she says.
(*name changed)