Protests mar academic activities at Islamia College University

PESHAWAR: Rumpus in the historic Islamia College University (ICU) marred academic activities as students belonging to a local ethnic group ransacked the office of the vice-chancellor and insulted a faculty member prompting the teachers’ representative body to stage a protest sit-in seeking protection to the teaching fraternity. The teachers said that the activists of a students organization had been resorting to violent activities for the past several weeks.

The most serious thing, they said, happened on Wednesday when a foreign student levelled allegations against several officers of the university administration and faculty members.

The veiled student of the Pashto Department, reportedly an American national, addressed the protesting students that there was no facility in the hostel where she was staying. She took up the issue with the relevant officials. “The officials asked me to meet them in the evening at their place(s) to sort out the matter,” she alleged.

She said that she was infected by dengue, but the hostel and university administration refused to allow her to go home or hospital for treatment.

After the fiery speech of the girl student, which was translated by a male student standing beside her, the group of students went to the Political Science Department where they misbehaved with a woman teacher and then turned to English Department where they tore up the clothes and hurled abuses to an English teacher Awal Said.

The group of students had ransacked the office of the vice-chancellor and misbehaved with the vice-chancellor a day earlier.

Soon after the mayhem created by the students, the teachers gathered in the campus under the aegis of TSA and launched a protest march towards the campus police offices where they staged a sit-in till the registration of FIR against the students involved in the misbehaviour with the faculty members.

The teachers were addressed by Teaching Staff Association (TSA) president Fazal Wahid, who said that the university administration had failed to provide protection to the teachers. They sought removal of the vice-chancellor and registrar from their offices immediately.

Registrar of the University Dawood Zeb said that an FIR had been registered against the students involved in the insult of the faculty member and damaging the university’s property.

About the allegations of the foreign student, he said that the matter had been referred to the harassment committee of the university, which would becproperly investigated. He said that the allegations were baseless and the student had been instigated by the student organisation to press the university administration for acceptance of their “illegal” demands.

One of the students, who has already completed graduation and has joined legal practice in the Peshawar High Court, has been asking the university administration to allot him three shops and a piece of university land near Dhobi Ghat where he wanted to establish a wedding hall.

The university was not in a position to accept any such demands, especially after precious lands of the university had already been occupied by people in various parts of the city and the province for several decades.

The affected teacher, Awal Said, told The News that the students involved in the violent protest were doing all this for their vested interests.