– Anonymous
The new ‘Substance Abuse’ Policy recently announced by the Hostel Affairs Secretary on behalf of the Hostel Office is sorely misguided in its intent, and extremely inadequate in the larger context of student wellbeing at IIT Madras.
In fact, without a fundamental understanding of substance abuse or the announcement of additional provisions – all while the existing, severely underfunded infrastructure struggles to keep pace with declining student mental health – this shift in policy can also be interpreted as actively dangerous.
The announcement, wreathed in corporate speak, is a chilling reminder of just how out of sync the Post-Pandemic Administration is with the lived realities of students on campus, and of just how many different student freedoms have slowly been stripped away and revoked, one by one, as compared to the 90s, 2000s, 2010s and even much earlier in IITM history.
What Does Hammurabi Write?
The notification states the following:
“Students found in possession of such [banned] substances will face immediate expulsion from the hostel at the first instance itself, with notification to their parents or guardians. This marks a significant change from the previous policy, which involved a monetary fine of ₹25,000 and prior parental notification.”
There are a few important points to be noted in the mail:
i) Substance abuse is first described as “a matter that has become increasingly pressing within our campus community.”
The notice goes on later to emphasise again “recent trends [that] indicate a disturbing rise in incidents related to substance use, affecting not only the individuals involved but also the overall well-being of our community.”
ii) It is admitted, “While [the] new approach may seem stringent, it reflects our commitment to addressing the growing concern surrounding substance abuse on campus.”
iii) An explanation for the shift is given: “The previous penalty did not effectively deter this behavior and often imposed an additional financial burden on families, without fostering a genuine commitment to change.”
iv) Towards the end a final, anchoring emphasis is struck: “We are steadfast in our vision of a substance-free campus.”
Financial Burdens, Faux Concerns?
The first and most obvious critique of the shift would start with point (iii). How exactly is expulsion from the hostel, and living outside of campus not an additional, if not far more severe financial burden on a family than a fine? A patently ridiculous statement to include, if anything.
Additionally, where in this process of expulsion is a genuine commitment to “change” fostered? A five-year old can tell that absolutely no critical thought was put into this empty disciplinarian stance. Without provision for counselling, this policy is effectively a death sentence for students struggling with substance abuse, who will now be made to live without any of the minor support systems they would have managed to scrounge up on campus, isolated and completely alone. Any chance of academic recovery is effectively rendered zero, with additional responsibilities and financial shortages to deal with. The stakes are suffocatingly high.
But, of course, as long as it’s not happening on campus, all is well!
Accountability 101
To fix a problem, accountability must be taken. Root causes must be looked into, across a chain of cause and effect, where petty egos must be expunged and expelled.
Accountability must be taken by the administration for the horrific state of mental health on campus. This has never been acknowledged in any way whatsoever. In fact, active efforts have consistently been made by both individuals and groups to actively deny this responsibility.
Mental health is always neatly and conveniently individualised, and never attributed to Institutional atmosphere. This new policy only seems to be an extension of this attempt, and the logics that constitute it.
An extension of horrific mental health on campus in many, many cases is substance use and abuse – it provides a brief escape for the vulnerable few, from what very quickly becomes a living hell for many.
It does not take a genius to make this connection. While no assurances are made for counselling services, the new policy shift only serves to slam additional pressure upon students struggling against an atmosphere which, at times it seems, actively seeks to choke them into submission to prove some grander point.
Vigilance and the Increased Frequency of Privacy Invasion
The fact that the checking of student hostel rooms has increased from a complaint-based policy that involved visiting a hostel maybe once or twice a month, to what is basically a daily operation for some hostels of late, is a key piece of information that has been entirely ignored in claiming the panic of “a disturbing rise in incidents” or “a matter that has become increasingly pressing”.
There are more invasions of privacy happening everyday in the IITM Campus than have happened at any point in its history, with Alumni openly displaying shock at the fact that room checks themselves somehow constitute an extant policy.
Ironically, the increasing breach of personal privacy is only exacerbating the mental health crisis. Students who have nothing to hide from Vigilance Checks obviously feel active annoyance, reluctant to return to their rooms to confront the disrespect that comes with a strange person rifling through one’s underwear. The lack of a personal space that can definitively be said to be yours in such a stressful environment leaves no time for complete rest or relaxation for the anxious – a concept that anyone with half a brain cell should be able to understand.
Yet the Administration will insist upon the unruly, ungrateful students who have brought this upon themselves, forcing their hand.
A campus monkey could probably grasp the logic quicker and better.
“If monkey search for bug many many time all the time, more bug. If monkey search for bug once a month, less bug.”
Maybe this analogy can be offered to explain this tricky piece of Maths to the Administration?
The fact that conditions are being made more volatile and uncomfortable for students who have no faith in the privacy of their own room, all in the vague pursuit of a “Substance Free Campus” is simply baffling. The use of banned substances by students in IITs goes back to its founding days – there will always be a subsection of students experimenting with such substances in any college. To pretend as if some golden era of innocence is now finally ending, and is being sacrificed to some harmful Western modernity, is foolhardy and unrealistic.
Does the Campus somehow exist separately from its students? Which of the two is the priority?
The opaque pathologising of substance use and abuse among students, without a single care to look at the underlying social factors behind it, is actively dangerous and completely unjustifiable in the present context.
Unjustifiability
If the Institution putting forward this policy was known throughout the realm for its sparkling mental health and generously funded student welfare schemes, this policy would make perfect sense, and would be above any and all reproach. However, in an Institution that has a grim reputation for student suicides, and a swiftly rising disciplinarian bent that is not keeping pace with the lived, social reality of students on the ground, the framing of this policy is, quite honestly, bananas. It betrays the same fundamental lack of attention to the holistic well-being of students which, ironically enough, leads them down the path of substance abuse in the first place.
It can and must be argued that if just 1 out of every 100 students awarded this punishment was struggling with depression, anxiety and suicidal ideation (the number is obviously higher), it would be an unconscionable act on the part of the Hostel Administration to swiftly cast that student out of the Campus – to make them someone else’s (or more realistically, no one’s) problem.
There is simply no moral justification to insist on a disciplinarian push in such a charged, depression-filled environment. At the very least the announcement could have been accompanied by a list of counselling services, or a set of other initiatives that ensured, or even simply displayed, a genuine commitment to student well-being. Work must be put into funding a system where students feel comfortable and safe enough to check themselves in when they realise their personal and academic lives are being severely affected by their abuse of substances.
The effort spent in holding God knows how many Vigilance raids, in holding hundreds of HDC meetings, where hundreds of students are berated, bullied and shamed, could so easily have been spent on far more supportive mechanisms that could have actually made a difference. Students are arbitrarily infantilised and arbitrarily made to take responsibility in some very puzzling patterns.
This policy may be likened to a final tantrum being thrown by a child after the world didn’t work the way he wanted it to. Student representatives must be more proactive in understanding the historical arc of student freedoms in Campus, and in whatever ways possible, offer protest.
A Grainy, Colourless Photograph
The most depressing feeling on a Campus like IIT Madras’ is to feel alone – to feel like no one cares about you, or whether you live, die, or run circles in the sky.
Cut-throat academic requirements ensure that the students around you are programmed to view you as competition. Large batch sizes decrease the probability of making a connection with a Professor. Invasive vigilance checks ensure that there is no space on campus one can truly call one’s own. These issues constitute only the tip of the iceberg, and don’t exactly paint the prettiest of pictures. “Inconvenient” membership along the lines of caste, class and gender make things all the more difficult. At the very least, the Hostel Administration should step up in making a student feel like they are actually wanted in the Campus – a Campus at which they are paying steadily increasing fees through the nose to study, as affordability slowly slides out the window.
Only time will tell how the mental health, selfhood and creativity of the students that they are entrusted with – upon the public purse, it must be emphasised – will be affected. It speaks to an attitude where a sanitised, ridiculously idealised vision of the Campus is worshipped at the expense of the dirty, inconveniently complex students who populate it.
This tough, disciplinarian, no-nonsense, ultra-masculine policy approach, with zero provision for additional measures, critical thinking or commitments, can only end in tears.
Tears that no one in the Administration will be required to cry.
Article 19 