PESHAWAR: After the gory incident of lynching Mashal Khan, the vice-chancellors of public sector universities and high ups of higher education department have stressed the need for strengthening students counselling, redressing their problems and arranging weekly lectures on tolerance for them.

The vice-chancellors or their representatives and officials of HED met for the first time here on Wednesday after lynching of Mashal Khan in Abdul Wali Khan University Mardan. The meeting was called to discuss situation in the universities.

The meeting, held at Archives Library, was chaired by HED Secretary Syed Zaffar Ali Shah.

Meeting discusses situation in universities after lynching of student

“Different suggestions were floated by VCs in the hours-long meeting to bring improvement in the situations in the state-run universities,” several participants of the meeting told Dawn.

They said that some of them insisted on arranging a lecture in a week at each department on tolerance and love in the light of Islam and law of the state. The relevant department of the university would decide about the nature of topic on tolerance.

“It would be a very good decision, if taken, to deliver a lecture on tolerance as lynching of Mashal Khan has shaken the entire fabric of the society,” one of the participants told Dawn.

He said that specific lectures on tolerance on weekly basis could stem the rising intolerance in the society. He said that such lectures should not be restricted to the universities only rather colleges should also be included in it.

It was also suggested to reactivate the students counselling societies and centres in the universities for solution of their problems.

A senior official at University of Peshawar told Dawn that there were 17 student societies but those were virtually dysfunctional mostly owing to shortage of funds and lack of interest.

He said that about six years ago, the student federations affiliated with different political parties were not so influential when student societies were functioning effectively. “Students can approach easily these societies for solving or discussing any issue,” he added.

The official said that owing nonfunctioning of those societies, students were approaching wings of different political parties and resultantly they were influenced by them. “Each student society is led by a teacher and supervised by the office registrar,” he added.

The participants of the meeting also suggested minimising gap between students and their teachers as it would help to increase trust in each other. They said that students should not be treated by teachers like their opponents rather pupils. They said that an opportunity should be provided to students to listen to their grievances and efforts should be made to remove the same.

Some of the VCs said that punishment in disciplinary action against students should also be reduced to maximum level.

They also suggested co-curricular activities in the universities and said that students should be encouraged to participate in sports events that should be arranged by the administration of universities.

During the meeting, the high-ups of HED informed the VCs that the department decided to award grant to the universities showing best performance. “For this purpose, a scheme of Rs1 billion would be introduced in the upcoming provincial budget,” they said.

Published in Dawn, April 27th, 2017