Ceylon Today Editorial

From Students to Criminals...

21 February 2017

Every now and then, there occurs an event that makes one lose all hope in humanity. We have a talent of making ourselves miserable in numerous innovative ways. On these few days, we are sure that the Hell is empty and all the devils are here on Earth.

The latest addition to human ineffability was reported yesterday.

Fifteen students from the Faculty of Agriculture, University of Peradeniya were arrested last Sunday (19) by the Peradeniya Police for severely ragging eight first year students of the same university. Upon receiving a complaint, the Police were able to locate the victimized students who were being ragged, assaulted and tortured at a house in Kalugamuwa, Peradeniya. The Peradeniya Police officers making the arrest became unwitting witnesses to the horror that had taken place at the house where the first year university students were lying naked, covered in bruises and in binds.

The tortured students were admitted to the Peradeniya Teaching Hospital and the accused were produced in the Kandy Magistrates Court yesterday where they were remanded until 2 March.

University authorities later commenting on the matter had stated that this incident should be a 'lesson' to all those who take part or support - intentionally or otherwise - the ragging culture in universities. The authorities who have suddenly become empathetic towards the situation misguidedly hope that necessary steps will be taken to address the situation according to the legal system of the country.

It is very common knowledge that university authorities – lecturers and other faculty members –have carried on a tradition of ignorance and utter negligence when it comes to students being ragged within universities. This tradition of laxity has been synonymous and parallel to the tradition of ragging among university students – the seniors would rag the juniors and the lecturers would ignore it and consider ragging to be an urban legend.

There might be a handful of university heads that occasionally stands against ragging but then again, even if they had taken steps to stand against it, their efforts had come to naught because ragging continues through our proud free education system.

Therefore, university authorities making sympathetic comments on the latest of events sounds more like a well managed publicity stunt, instead of a proper rally for action.

This brings us to the next question at hand; have our State universities become a breeding ground for torture centres with senior students behaving like sex perverts and sociopaths?

With the latest of these events, it seems as if the answer is yes. And according to numerous accounts of victims – publicized and otherwise – who have suffered untold humiliation or extreme forms of ragging at the hands of some senior students, this is the case despite the height of our human evolution.

Most parents' dream is to send their children to a State university and make them responsible citizens. But what awaits the freshers in some universities is a gruelling torture course which they are forced to undergo. Unable to withstand the severity of extreme forms of ragging, some students leave the university, while children of affluent parents prefer tertiary education at private institutes in Sri Lanka or overseas to a degree in State universities.

Despite ragging being officially prohibited in universities and is a punishable offence under the Prohibition of Ragging and Other Forms of Violence in Educational Institutions Act, No. 20 of 1998, it still continues in the form of depersonalisation and over all removal of a sense of individualism. Seniors under the guise of what they like to call 'orienting' first year students and making them 'comfortable' to the new surroundings, torment freshers through their undisciplined haughty speech and at times violent physical actions which can be tantamount to torture, and therefore raggers can be charged under the Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman, or Degrading Treatment or Punishment Act, No. 22 of 1994, while provisions in the Penal Code are applied as well.

This latest addition to the violent history of ragging in Sri Lanka, this House of Horror, its tormentors and its victims, one could hope would bring about the end of ragging in Sri Lanka. The optimist in our psyche would like to hope that this would be the turning point to all these matters and this would stop students from turning into blood thirsty criminals.

But, even as we write, we know that this is just a pipedream.

This problem would not go away any time soon - not as long as the government turns a blind eye to prisoners being tortured, while the heartless society condemning those who are different and prosecuted for being unique. This is where the root of the ragging problem lies. The seniors who need to create a generalized batch out of the freshers are indirectly motivated and cultivated by the norms of the society he or she comes from. And that is reflected in his or her actions – in this case ragging.

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