The Hindu : Tamil Nadu / Chennai News : An association that makes college proud

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Wednesday, Sep 13, 2006
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Tamil Nadu

Tamil Nadu - Chennai

An association that makes college proud

R. Sujatha

Former students of Stanley Medical College have made it a habit to help their juniors

CHENNAI: The alumni association of Government Stanley Medical College is a resourceful group that has made the college proud.

This year, the alumni will help install an Internet facility in the men's hostel library while the women's hostel will get a water treatment plant. The college library will also get an e-library.

The 50-year-old association had earlier helped build the college auditorium, and maintains a book repository and a bone bank for students learning anatomy in their first year. Dinakar Moses, secretary of the Stanley Medical College's alumni association, says, "Students who have graduated to the second year hand over their first year books and bone set to the juniors."

The alumni meet for a week towards the end of January, and veterans deliver lectures as part of the annual continuing medical education programme for the benefit of students.

The meeting begins with a rally, in which the oldest member carries the torch and leads the rally from the hospital to the college, and ends on the last Sunday of the month with a cultural fest.

Students going abroad for higher studies can fall back on their seniors there.

"Each senior backs up a junior. We have a Stanley-an flat in the United Kingdom and the United States. We have an alumni association in New Zealand and Australia," says B. Darwin, organising chairman of the meet this year.

The members note with pride that at one time in the 1970s most department heads in Madras Medical College were from Stanley.

An obelisk in the hospital lists the name of seven students who died serving in World War I.

Ten years ago the alumni association instituted the `Best non-Stanley-an's contribution to Stanley award' and the `Best Stanley-an award for contribution to medicine and society'.

Dean D.R. Gunasekaran says that many have rejected lucrative offers, including positions at the prestigious MMC. He is not a Stanley-an but has been with the institution for over a decade. "Stanley attracts and traps," says microbiologist and alumna Rosie Vanilla.

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