KARACHI, Oct 26: Tens of thousands of Karachi University students on Wednesday suffered on account of the boycott of classes by teachers in response to a Karachi University Teachers’ Society decision to lodge a protest over the conferment of an honorary doctorate degree on the federal interior minister.
While teaching activities which were suspended at around 55 departments at 11.30am caused a number of students to leave before noon, the president of the teachers’ elected body said the two-hour protest was lodged ‘in the interest of students’.
The Kuts general body decision and the subsequent boycott of classes by teachers came just days before the scheduled election of the teachers’ association on Oct 29.
“It was a highly successful boycott of classes by the university teachers,” said Kuts secretary Dr Shakeel Farooqui while speaking to Dawn.
He added that an overwhelming participation of teachers, including cooperative teachers, in the boycott was ample proof that none of them had approved of the authorities’ decision to award an honorary degree to the minister.
He said a future line of action regarding teachers’ protests would be decided by Kuts’ new office-bearers, whose election for the year 2011-12 was scheduled to be held on Saturday, at the general body meeting.
Through its unanimously passed resolution, the Kuts Saturday general body meeting had not only protested against the university’s chancellor and vice chancellor’s decision of conferring the honorary doctorate degree on the federal minister but had also demanded that they immediately withdraw the honour.
Dr Farooqui said the university teachers through the same resolution had also demanded setting up of a national commission to evaluate the criteria to award academic honours for all public-sector universities. He said there were fears that politicians might enter a race for such academic honours from public-sector universities in the country.
It was learnt that teachers attending the Saturday meeting were divided on the issue of boycott of teaching activities, with some calling for a daylong suspension of classes while others in the favour of a partial boycott.
When Kuts President Prof Abid Hasnain was contacted by Dawn to know why the society’s general body had decided to opt for boycotting classes at the costs of students, he said: “Some participants of the meeting were of the opinion that there should be a daylong boycott of classes, some others were of the opinion that classes should be boycotted from 10am to 12noon. It was in the interest of students that the most of the participants finally decided to record their protest against the degree issue by boycotting classes from 11.30am to 1.30pm, which is considered as the least affected study duration.”