Notices- who doesnât love them? Sometimes youâll be in your own world and a notice pulls you right back into reality with its iron grip. In a big university like LU, one might only find out about something or certain happenings through notices. Theyâre indispensable when it comes to keeping students informed. However, it seems to me that LU prides itself on its incomprehensibly inconsistent, incompetent, and incoherent notice system.
Let me explain my frustration more clearly: Notices in LU come at a momentâs notice and sometimes, they do not come at all. Thereâs a convenient little âNoticesâ tab on the Universityâs website. How helpful! Only, it does not include all the notices that are sent by the administration. Why is that so? Who knows! It just is. Students have to rely on friends, random WhatsApp groups and unofficial channels to stay informed. In the worst-case scenario, they have to make their way to the campuses if they just want to find out about something.
This so-called magnificent system has caused me so much grief and anger that every time it fails, I am genuinely amazed at how this system keeps functioning. Iâll cite a few incidents which hammer this point home:
When Semester 1 students finally had their exam forms released, everyone rushed to fill them because we had been waiting, for what seemed like ages, for these forms to be released. Now, after everything was done through the Samarth portal, we were told that we had to take a printout of the exam form along with our allotment letter and submit it to our respective faculty. How was this information relayed to us? By other students and friends, of course. No notice could be found on the website mentioning anything like this but of course when we made our way to the campus, we could see a physical notice plastered on the wall mentioning this. Why was this not uploaded on the website? This is basic information!
Worse still, when the exam forms were released, we only came to know of them because other people were regularly checking the Samarth portal for information. The notices for the exam forms came hours later after they were released. Because of this comical mismanagement, a lot of students thought the news was fake!
Following the conclusion of Semester 1 exams, everyone knew that classes would be up and running shortly. There was a lot of mystery and intrigue surrounding this because frankly, no one knew when classes would start. When we got to know of it, thanks to our Professors informing us, there was still some ambiguity in certain departments. Case in point: Ancient Indian History. The timetables for classes had been shared with us which helped us gain some clarity. Most classes were starting from 27th January so I figured that AIH would follow suit, right? Oh no, not at all! Apparently, the classes had been commencing since 6th January! Let me repeat: The Semester 2 classes had been going on since 6th January⌠amidst the Semester 1 exams. Of course, no students attended the classes because, why would they? Exams were going on.
Dear Reader, I hope you are able to intuit how ridiculous all of this was. Nevertheless, I went to attend my class on 27th January, only to find an empty class. I was confused and then, I was informed that apparently you had to go to each Professor and find out when theyâll start taking classes. Why werenât we informed of this beforehand?
Any guesses as to how I came to know of this? Of course, it was again through fellow students. The cherry on top? After I had come home, our Professor for that particular slot sent us a message, it was a photo of a notice detailing how classes would start from 27th January. This message was sent in the afternoon, when almost all classes are over.
I hope you are able to understand my frustration with how wildly unreliable and painfully confusing these notices are.These are just a few examples of my own. Iâm sure other students have a litany of stories to tell. And in the mind of every student rings out a stream of questions: Why are the physical notices sometimes not even uploaded on the website? If a student must make their way to the University every single time they wish to gain even a tidbit of information, then whatâs the point of even having a âNoticesâ section on the website? Why is it that sometimes the details of the notices themselves are at odds with reality?
LU NEEDS to address this. This system needs to change because of how mind numbingly incompetent it is. This is the bare minimum you can expect from ANY higher education institution. If LU falters at such a basic aspect of running a higher education institution, what does that imply about its performance elsewhere? And how can students be expected to care about university affairs when they are not even kept informed?