Most Calcutta University principals support offline exams – Times of India

KOLKATA: Most colleges affiliated to Calcutta University supported offline tests at a principals’ meet held on Friday to discuss the preferred mode of exams. The final decision will be taken at CU’s Syndicate meeting on June 3.
One of the principals said, “As a principal, I want offline exams. If a student can write papers online, what is the problem with writing the same answers offline?”
The CU undergraduate council on May 20 unanimously decided to conduct even semester exams offline, following which the university authorities called a meeting with principals of its 155 affiliated colleges in Kolkata, South 24 Parganas, Howrah and Hooghly to discuss their views on the preferred mode-online or pen-and-paper. Despite students’ demonstration for online exams and around 20 principals, including that of Girish Chandra College, AJC Bose College and Sundarban Hazi Desarat College, sharing their students’ demand for tests on the virtual mode, very few among the other principals attending the meeting extended their support for it.
Even as the meeting was being held at CU’s Darbhanga hall on the College Street campus, students from various colleges, such as Jaipuria, Bangabasi, Deshbandhu Girls’, Women’s Christian, Budge Budge and AJC Bose College, as well as those in post-graduate courses, staged a demonstration at both the gates, demanding online exams.
The gatherings reportedly blocked the entrances, as a result of which a few PG Arabic studies students allegedly missed internal assessment and some, who had visited the campus for provisional certificates, could not enter the building. Koyel Ghosh, a student at Deshbandhu College for Girls, said, “Teachers have not completed syllabus. We could attend on-campus classes for hardly one-and-a-half months as summer vacation was brought forward. We are not prepared for offline exams.” Protesters at Sanskrit College and University even gheraoed vice-chancellor Anuradha Mukhopadhyay, with the same demand.