RBU postpones venue shift

Mou Chakraborty
Kolkata, May 23, 2007
Bowing to student protests, Rabindra Bharati University has decided to postpone shifting its fine arts department, located at its Jorashanko campus to its main campus in B.T. Road by at least six months.
For a long time, the university has wanted to shift the entire academic wing to its main campus at B.T. Road. The building at Jorashanko is an international heritage site. Rabindranath Tagore was born in his ancestral house here and spent a considerable portion of his life there. Later, the house became the university’s property and the visual arts and fine arts departments were located here. By shifting academic activities to the main campus, the state government and the university wants to convert Tagore’s house to a tourist spot and have a Tagore research centre.
The fine arts section consisting of the Rabindra Sangeet, vocal music, dance, instrumental music, musicology and drama departments will be conducting its exams in June. Students are resisting the move because they feel uncomfortable taking the exams in a new venue.
“Shifting academic activities of the Jorashanko campus to our main campus was part of the university’s 10th five-year plan. The visual arts department has already moved but the fine arts department is taking more time to shift,” said Shontosh Kumar Gharui, registrar of the university. “We understand the student’s problem and we will only shift the campus after October, when all exams are over. Then students will have no problems moving to the new campus and adjusting there,” he added.
Many faculty members had alleged that the ambience at the B.T Road campus and the new building constructed for the fine arts department did not gel with the subjects to be taught there. Refuting the allegations, Gharui said, “What will a student do with ambience while he is learning? Moreover, the 5-storyed fine arts building is bigger than the present building used by them at Jorashanko. So there is no scope for complaints.”
On the contrary, according to the registrar, the shift to the new campus will give students the opportunity to study mainstream subjects along with fine arts as an honours subject. This will increase their chances of becoming a schoolteacher, as only students having mainstream subjects are eligible to take the School Service Commission exam.
“The protestors are those students and teachers who do not want to go to the new campus because it is far from their home and would not allow them to take tuitions. They are ignoring the fact that the shift will make the students more employable,” said a high placed university official.mou.hindustantimes@yahoo.com