This is not a news that any alumni would be proud of. Though it has been a case of at least 1 suicide per year @ IIT K. May be now it is more than before, or same and we feel its more because the news spreads faster in the world.But this definitely is a problem that needs to be looked into.
A very very good solution in my view is described below, in the words of Dr. Ashok Gupta:
I would like to share with you a modest attempt to prevent suicides on IITK Campus that we recently launched. Students at IITK have been very appreciative of this effort. Let me briefly describe it.
We have set up a Blog "Go For It..." Every month we will publish story of an alumni who struggled as student at IIT but is now doing well in life and career. We will also publish stories of alumni who chose to follow their dream and are doing what their heart desires, especially pursuing a non-traditional career path. The link to these stories are shared with students at IITK (through student Gymkhana) and posted on various Facebook pages that students and alumni visit.
The two stories currently on the Blog have exceeded our expectations. We have had more than 23,000 views. Comments on these stories have been made by not just IITK students and faculty but also by IITD, IITB, IITkgp and even non-IIT readers. Readers have engaged with featured alumni.
My take on the situation and possible solutions:
Can counselling parents help?
I would be interested to know the background of parents in these cases and see if we can coach the parents at all. I distinctly recall, in my stay, we had one case of suicide in hall-2 and I clearly remember his parents profession and their total monthly income could have been about 3-4k, both working day in and out. (Compared to that my own monthly expense was 1.5k incl. mess and canteen when I was a "frugal" guy.) If this guy made it to IIT, it must be his determination and parents would, at best be able to tell him "do as you seem fit". I fear touching such parents, will complicate their simple lives.
I would think the parents are the same as they have always been, so are students, so are the expectations and so are the professors.
So what has changed?
Last December I visited IIT-K after almost 10 years. Like everyone else, the place had so many fond memories of my days, but in this visit I found the place had completely changed. There are so many rules, so many security guards, so much traffic, I just could barely relate to the place with my memories.
All the freedom, coziness is gone, so has the personal space we had. The infra is far too loaded than it should be and that is causing the stress. I felt stressed out walking around with so many SIS guards staring at me in a 100 m stretch. That in my view is the main problem. There is no personal space for people to catch a breath and take right decisions.
We need to create that space again. I would think we need a more "social"(as in facebook social) solution. The stories are good, people will read and discuss. Also, the counselling service needs to be revamped and made a by the students, for the students body and it should have people who are interested in people rather than the ones professors thinks should represent counselling service. There should be proper tracking by students or may be by alumni. Another thing, we can do is to assign an alumni,with similar background, with individual students to communicate on emails or phone, may be. Getting in touch directly a person will have even better impact than reading stories about them.
Even though its been 12 years and I had barely spent 15-20 mins in "intro" with him, the pain of loosing that junior, not being able to help him, is still in my heart. I hope we come up with something that helps!
2 comments:
The initiative of story on blog is good, apprecite it. More can be done about it, as you have pointed out.
1. Visit by alumni or video talk on such experiences, stories shall be a good add.
2. Mentorship, as you have also pointed out, giving few contacts to students to call for discussion or counselling and have a peer shall be useful too.
3. I agree with you that IITK is different now, and I felt similar suffocation when I visited last.
Flexibility and freedom of students need to be restored.
Corporate like environment has come in, and we need to go back to the simplicity and relaxed environment of the institute as it used to be.
Detailed steps may need to planned by those closely associated with the issue or initiatives.
4. I also found that the students were being blamed for failure or controlled in a distrustful way. This needs to be completely replaced with an encouraging, trusting environment. Again, people running the institute shall need to make suitable changes and students should discuss this with authorities.
5. Each student should be treasured and the open support available should be regularly communicated. They should not feel alone.
Thanks for posting, appreciate your points.
IIT Kanpur Bangalore Chapter is working on some of the ideas that you have suggested in the blog post. We met 2 weeks ago to discuss it. We need ethusiastic people who will also be devote some time and take the idea forward.
Please contact Mr. Bal Krishna Birla (bkbirla@gmail.com) if you are interested.
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