If you study in an engineering college or for that matter have any friend in one of the IITs, you for sure would know what they mean when they tell you that they had a night-out. Night-outs could be any fun activity undertaken at night, and can happen both inside the college campus and outside. A night when the whole wing sat together to watch a whole season of Friends, or an epic movie the umpteenth time or a gaming extravaganza of clan mathces in Counter Strike?
For day boarders in colleges, a night-out is actually restricted as they live in their homes. But, for IITians and IIITians, it’s the night-time when they have all the fun. All this fun has also has after-effects, most of them on the study-habits, paticularly in classes in the day.
The After-effects of Night-outs
Here I list out some common after-effects due to waking up at night or the night-outs:
- Students tend to wake up late or for that matter wake up around lunch time. They miss classes, and get involved in attendance issues. Most of the colleges have a minimum requirement of attendance and missing out on it leads to either scrapping of grades or in worst cases – prohibition in giving exams.
- If students reach the class, they tend to sleep there. Some even sleep on the front bench when the professor is busy teaching algorithms.
- Academic scores go down and as said in this article, some even commit suicide. (Done by IITians mostly and I don’t think they do it just because of a poor academic showing).
- Many of them start taking drugs, drinking and smoking weed, because of frustration piled up due to the academic pressure.
- So many students play sports in school, and when they enter college only a handful can be seen sweating on the grounds.
List of Institutes – Enemies of the Internet
The following is a list of institutes who are either thinking of shutting down internet during the night hours or have banned social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter:
- IIIT Allahabad: Has been banning Twitter and Facebook at regular intervals but student protests get things to normal everytime. Inside sources in the college told us that 2 proxy servers each with bandwidths of 150 MB and 50 MB respectively are functional and so the net is slow. The students are not left with much options and they have to shut their systems after sometime. Such poor net speed in an IT college!! :O
- IIIT Hyderabad: Internal sources say that discussions have been going on how keep the students woken up in classes. Potetial solutions which have been discussed by the panel are shutting down the internet at night, banning social networking sites.
- IIT Kanpur: They want to shut the internet from 12 am to 6 am. Here’s what the registrar Mr. Sanjeev Kashalkar was quoted saying:
The campus is wi-fi enabled and it has been found that students use Internet throughout the night on their laptops due to which they are sleepy during classes and it adversely affects their academic performance.
- IIT Bombay: These guys have a restriction in place already. Students were surprised when the net stopped functioning at night according to this Times of India report.
Do they need to cut the internet though?
I am a student and understand that in today’s world all of us are more connected through the internet than anything else. All my friends and professional contacts are on social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter, and Linkedin. The internet has given me the power to be connected with them on a regular basis, some of them live in far-flung places like New Zealand, where I can’t even call them. I Skype with them. Now, if the authority will shut down internet or restrict on the bandwidth just because they think that it is a potential reason for sleeping in classes then I’d not be able to keep in touch with my friends and family.
Nowadays, the study patterns have also changed. Google has become an intrinsic part of any class assignment – be it an engineering project submission or studying for the exams. The internet helps students if they really know how to utilise its power. Shutting it down is not the right solution. Rather, authorities should think of more ways of engaging students in class than dreary lectures. People will go and buy data-cards if the authorities cut the internet connection, and then what will they do – cut that as well? Lol. Also, I feel sports activities should be made compulsory if people are not playing enough sports. Regarding suicides, which has always marred the IITs image, I think a proper communication channel which is not too formal will help students in coping with pressures of life. But, shutting down internet is not a possible solution. We shouldn’t be thinking of doing that if we plan to really be one of the super-achievers in the world economy.
We need to groom our talent, and the internet as always will play a major role in it. Yes, even Facebook!
If you happen to read this article, share it, and comment on what you think of the whole notion of shutting down the internet at night. What methods do we need to keep our students awake and aware?