Frank Krishner asks some searching questions, it’s for the College Administration to find the answers!

The past few days have been particularly traumatic for the ‘veteran’ professors of Patna Women’s College. Why? Because there is this overpowering sense of a loss of innocence. The students, with some tacit support from inside and outside forces (one suspects), have used social media to drag the fair name of the College and the principal through the mud.

From what I have gathered, a professor in the Department of Mass Communication had been accused of inappropriate classroom behaviour. The head of department accompanied by some aggrieved students, submitted a written complaint to the principal, Sr. Marie Jessie. The principal, to ascertain the nature of the complaint asked the complainants a few searching questions. She then said that an investigation would take place and action would be taken. The principal accordingly set up a two-person probe team that went into the matter. A week later, the team recommended dismissal of the professor.

What is curious is this. Even as the college was looking into the matter, certain ‘unidentified’ students began sending messages via WhatsApp, demonising the accused teacher, accusing the college authorities of trying to protect him, and attributing certain statements to the principal that were clearly out of character.

Even as the investigation was completing, the BMC students stage a ‘walkout’ and boycott of classes, and Times of India and other newspapers pick up the story quoting the WhatsApp messages, and of course, sensationalising the matter. The police get involved, even though there is no police complaint filed, and curiously, on the day that the man’s services are being terminated, we have the unseemly spectacle of outside students trying to storm the PWC gates, and students inside screaming slogans demanding ‘justice’.

Never before have we seen Patna Women’s College on the boil, with students from other departments, including some very impressionable first years from my department (Communicative English with Media Studies) who were all fired up and were asking questions.

Now let me tell you why I smell a large rat in the soup. I hold no brief for the man, now that the probe committee has found it fit that he resign, but let’s talk about the ‘politicisation’ of the issue.

First: the accused had been teaching for the past six years in the college. How could he have continued for six years using ‘double meaning’ sentences in the class and doing heavens know what without any of the students complaining? 180 students in the department! Did no one ever let the HoD know for the past six years? Come on! this is supposed to be Patna Women’s College where everyone supposedly is all for women’s rights. Not one complaint? Or was this ‘common knowledge’ but nobody, not even the Heads, wanted to bring this matter up with the Principal: the then much feared Dr Sister Doris? If so, then it’s a crying shame.

There’s a counter narrative that the accused was a stickler for rules, that he was practically saddled with a lot of nuts and bolts organisational work in the department, and that there had been friction between him and the current Head. He may not have been popular but he was not all that unpopular with the students in general, it appears.

Second: Several years ago, a past student of the CEMS informs me, there was a guest faculty member, let’s call him ‘N’, who acted inappropriately in the classroom. The student, now a very successful edupreuner, had complained to Sister Marie Jessie, who was the head of CEMS Department at the time. The teacher was removed. No fuss, no walkouts, nobody instigating the media. Therefore, it is totally out of character that the same Sister Marie Jessie would ‘defend’ or ‘protect’ anybody. If a student making an allegation, it does not automatically follow that the allegation is true, even if that person belongs to the female gender. Don’t women lie? Therefore, in the interests of giving both parties a fair hearing, the principal cannot take sides until and unless that allegation is tested.

Third: How did the HoD of the Mass Communication Department handle the matter? What caused the students of her department to stage a walkout and boycott classes? Did she or did she not explain the procedures that have to be taken in an institution when any person is accused of sexual misconduct? Did she not explain that there was a timeline in which the administration had to come up with the decision? Did she not assure them that the Principal and the college administration would act in a fair and appropriate manner? Did the students stage a walkout despite these assurances? Had they no trust in their own HoD, who actually took up their cause and brought the issue to the notice of the principal? Did they go out to defame the college and the principal even after the HoD explained things to them? Were these students instigated by some external mischief makers? How did an external students union get involved in creating a ruckus and damaging the college gate? Do such students deserve to continue in the college?

Did somebody fear that the probe committee would try to exonerate the accused? Who wanted to plant the seeds of distrust in the integrity of the committee? Was this a well planned pressure tactic? Did the students or a group of students wilfully and on purpose start this campaign to malign and finish the reputation of this man, as well as the integrity of the college administration no matter what the probe committee found? If this were so, then in the words of Shakespeare, “it was a grievous fault, and grievously must they pay for it.”

The virulent messages being bandied about on WhatsApp, filled with half-truths being circulated to all the students? Why? For what purpose? Which student sent out these messages? Who instigated them? It is important that the college get to the bottom of this. The cyber crime chaps can help the college to unearth the origin of the messages. Without doubt, this is anti-college activity and those responsible for this should be found out and punished.

  Frank Krishner, Patna Women’s College