As the lockdown is starting to get lifted, along with the daily COVID-positive cases increasing rapidly, many educational institutes are in a hurry to conduct End Semester Exam without thinking about the safety of students as well as teachers. Majority of colleges under MHRD have student’s hostels where students will have to come from various parts of India, thereby creating a high possibility of increasing the chances of COVID-19 infection. The solution is to re-consider the evaluation procedure.Evaluation can be done in following ways:

• Evaluate students based on the marks of internal exams, assignments and mid semester exam with an option to not include the grades of this semester in the overall CGPA. Interested students can give exam voluntarily.   

• Another convenient way is to pass all students.

The following points are the major areas of concern regarding the opening of institutions right at this moment when COVID-19 infectivity is increasing in an unprecedented manner:

1. The institutes are not bothering about the students, especially of those residing in rural areas who are facing challenges like poor network coverage and other connectivity problems regarding the conductance of online classes, downloading materials and giving online exams.Students with good network coverage will get  unwanted advantages during exams.

2. Many institutes are planning to bring students in different batches which will lead to an unavoidable situation of intracampus COVID-19 epidemic. After the last student enters the campus they will give a time of 2-3 weeks and are planning to conduct exams. They are expecting that a student who didn't have internet at home, to complete the whole syllabus of every course using campus internet in just 2-3 weeks. Usually, a student having 7-10 courses per semester, how can anyone complete that in such a minimum span of time?

3. Due to the semester getting extended indefinitely, students are losing their interests and are in a frustrating condition. Also, the institutes might have to sit and think about the fact that if a student (non-residential colleges) carries the COVID-19 virus all the way to his/her home and an elderly person gets infected, who would take the responsibility??

4. As this semester is getting extended and next semester to be held properly, there will possibly be no/negligible winter vacation. Two consecutive semesters without any break is completely inhuman for a student.

5. If a student gets infected with COVID-19 then he/she will be unable to give exam. Even if he/she gets recovered the mental trauma will not support him/her to give re-exam and pass the semester.

 Various institutes under MHRD (IIT Mumbai, IIT Kanpur, IIT Kharagpur, ISM Dhanbad, NIT Warangal, NIT Kurukshetra, NIT Rourkela, IIEST Shibpur, NISER etc.) have already cancelled their exams and evaluating their students based on the above mentioned procedure, now it is high time for other institutes to rethink and follow these alternatives. Various State Governments have also asked state colleges and universities to cancel exams. The colleges under MHRD are independent in terms of decision making and they are taking completely unjustified decisions. A few days back a girl committed suicide because she didn't had proper internet to attend online class.

Student lives are more important than an exam.

Students are the future of a country. If they are not safe then the future is not safe.

#Justice_For_Students #Safety_Is_Priority