The Hindu : New Delhi News : St. Stephen’s issues notices to two senior History lecturers

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Tuesday, Jan 15, 2008
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St. Stephen’s issues notices to two senior History lecturers

Staff Reporter

For ‘abusing teaching space by making irrelevant statements’

Lecturers seek intervention of Vice-Chancellor and DUTA in the matter
Media adviser of the College Vinod Chowdhury refuses to reveal details of the notice

NEW DELHI: Delhi University’s St. Stephen’s College has issued show-cause notices to two of its senior History lecturers for “abusing the teaching space by indulging in irrelevant and incendiary statements on issues that do not pertain to the course of study”.

The Officer on Special Duty, Valson Thampu, served the notices this past week on Tasneem Suhrawardy and Sangeeta Luthra Sharma who have in turn approached the university Vice-Chancellor Deepak Pental and the Delhi University Teachers’ Association to intervene in the matter. They claim that all the charges against them are “baseless and without any substantive and corroborating evidence”. The identical notices issued to the two faculty members accusing them of “distributing scurrilous material, utterly unrelated to anything in the course in the classroom during what should have been teaching sessions guided by the prescribed syllabus”. The notice signed by Mr. Thampu read: “I understand that this had been done repeatedly to the point of provoking some students to protest explicitly in the classroom against such irresponsible and objectionable conduct on your part to the detriment of their academic welfare and sense of propriety. This is also talked about widely in the college community, which is detrimental to the wholeness and cohesion of St. Stephen’s College as an institution of academic excellence.” The media adviser of the College, Vinod Chowdhury, refused to reveal what exactly had prompted the serving of the show-cause notices on these senior teachers.

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