Part 1: What Happened and What Didn’t—A Look into the Ministries: Campus Life Ministry and Ministry of Academic Affairs

In a three-part series, The Edict examines the achievements of the Ministries within the Ashoka University Student Government (AUSG) so far. The goals set by the ministries at the AUSG open meeting on 23rd September 2024 are compared with the Recap Reports sent to the student body via email on 31st December 2024, AUSG Monthly Reports released on 2nd April, interviews with the Ministers, and any other emails sent to assess their accomplishments.

This is part one of the series.

Campus Life Ministry (CLM)

The CLM Team and Minister, Urja Hansraj (ASP’25), have been active in raising student concerns about specific administrative decisions, such as the introduction of baggage scanners with minimal student involvement at the beginning of the Spring ’25 semester and the increase in room inspections in February 2025.

Over the past year, the CLM has also collaborated with student and administrative bodies to reduce the price of food outlets on campus and was involved in constituting many committees to facilitate student input in administrative decisions. After the protests in Spring’25, Vice Chancellor Somak Raychaudhury agreed to have student representatives in the standing committee constituted to address substance abuse on campus. Two of the student representatives are CLM members and are working on the final recommendations from the AUSG’s end to enhance campus life and security. 

According to the AUSG expense tracker, CLM was allocated  Rs. 17,000, which was reduced to Rs. 15,200 during the AUSG’s Spring’25 budget reallocation. So far, the ministry has used Rs. 1,670 from that amount. Hansraj told The Edict that the budget is mainly for Spring’25 projects. Initiatives in the Monsoon’24 semester, such as the Laundry Survey, Food Outlets Survey, did not entail much spending. 

In the Open Meeting on 23rd September, CLM said that the CLM grant, which provides funding for student-led initiatives to enhance campus life, will begin in September 2024 and remain open till February 2025. However, CLM launched the grant only in March 2025. The Reallocations Amount (Spring’25) page of the expense tracker also shows an increase of Rs. 1000 to the grant compared to the projected expenditure of Rs. 8000 in September 2024.

CLM has collaborated with various student and administrative bodies to address various student concerns. According to the monthly reports of the AUSG, CLM, in January and February 2025, worked with the transport team to address the problem of overbooking of shuttles, no-show policies and requests for increased shuttle capacities. So far, there have been no updates or resolution from the CLM or Transport Team on this issue. In the Spring’25 semester, however, CLM has collaborated with the transport team to work on the change in metro stations amid safety concerns.  

Since October 2024, CLM has been working with the Vendor Management Team to reduce food prices through the introduction of outlets such as Chai 24 and price cuts at Rasananda and Dosai. However, there has been pushback from the owners of some outlets such as The Hunger Cycle and Bikanerwala. Bikanerwala shut down permanently since the “price is too high, it is in RH 6 and 7, and the vendor was reluctant to lower prices.” According to Hansraj, CLM had informed the administration about high prices before Bikanerwala was introduced.

On 8th April 2025,  Kappil Antil (ASP’25), owner and student manager of Rasaananda, emailed the student body, claiming that the administration has micromanaged prices at the outlet and the reduction has hurt their business. Antil also accused the administration of “strategic manipulation” after the administration allegedly said that CLM suggested the lowered prices.

In response to Antil’s email, CLM maintained that cost reduction “should never come at the expense of vendors being mistreated or unfairly pressured”. Despite the back and forth with CLM, Antil and the administration, no conclusive decision has been taken on the matter.

With the dining team, CLM Team edits weekly menus, works on the quality of food, rearranges the mess tables after meal times, addresses long queues, snack arrangements, the number of workforce with the mess team and the operating hours of food outlets. In March 2025, they started Kitchen Tour Fridays and have been working to allow students to collaborate with the dining team to cook food at the mess.

They have also been working with the Financial Aid Office to increase the stipend for students on exceptional aid. At the beginning of the Monsoon’24 semester, they voiced concerns about the living conditions in Residence Halls (RH) 1, 6 and 7 with the Student Life Office (SLO). 

Hansraj says that “They were vocal that the administration needed to consult students about things such as expansion projects”, and “created a four-member  student committee so that the committee can be consulted.” Hansraj refers to the inclusion of 4 student members into the faculty-staff standing committee, an invitation for which was sent by the Vice-Chancellor on 10th February 2025.

However, Hansraj “doesn’t think anything came of it” and told The Edict, “it is up in the air.”   For some concerns, such as the policy changes proposed for room inspections, there has been no conclusive response from the administration yet. 

According to the AUSG monthly report from January-February, the ministry created a CLM-RH-wise students WhatsApp group with over 410 members to address concerns in RHS, such as laundry, campus policies, etc.  Hansraj also mentions the ministry's efforts to increase washing machines on campus, something which “the administration does not get the need for.” 

However, in an email sent out on 22nd April 2025, the ministry shared that this request has been accepted, with new machines being added to the RHs and the old ones repaired or replaced.

In Spring’24, CLM rolled out an infrastructure survey, which, according to Hansraj, was “ideally supposed to be the biggest [AU]SG project,” but “they did not get enough responses” as “they released it too late, and did not have enough time to market it”. The ministry was contemplating whether they should have an infrastructure survey this year. They did not go ahead with it because they had not figured out a system where they could incorporate every infrastructure problem in a survey that students could fill out. “The next minister can take a decision on it,” says Hansraj.

Comparing the CLM’s work over the semester with their promises in the open meeting on 23rd September, The Edict finds that the bi-monthly newsletter and the CLM-tracker, which is supposed to give the student body access to minutes, activities and descriptions of their meetings, were not implemented.

According to Hansraj, the CLM-tracker was something that the ministry “wanted to do as a live project, so every time they take something up, they update.” But due to the “sheer amount of work [they’d] had across two semesters, the tracker has not been logistically feasible.” Hansraj  says that they are “going to release the tracker as a year-end snapshot.” 

With regards to the unimplemented bi-monthly newsletter, Hansraj says that they “faced a few issues” with the marketing team, to the point where it is literally dissolved now.” However, the “main rationale behind the newsletter was to be transparent with the student body,” and Hansraj maintains that they did this through the emails they regularly send out.

Ministry of Academic Affairs (MAA)

The budget for the Ministry of Academic Affairs (MAA) was initially Rs. 5000 for 2024-2025. According to Minister Sania Bhargava (UG’26), the reason for a smaller budget is threefold. She says it is because “last year’s ministry was not able to utilise its budget because of which she felt she had lesser bargaining power,” as “the ministry expands to policy and resources and is not just event-focused” and due to their reliance on “digital mediums, social media and events” for communication.

However, Bhargava highlighted that “they did realise that the initial monsoon budget needed to be extended, which is why they had requested an additional Rs. 6000,” at the beginning of the Spring’25 semester. They have exhausted  Rs. 7,231 of their new budget of Rs. 11,951, according to the AUSG expense tracker.  

In Monsoon’24, MAA  created a General Policy Handbook, compiled 20+ Department Handbooks, launched Pathways, which gives students sample trajectories, and launched online citation guides.. The Open Q&A Group, for more accessible communication, has garnered over 490+ members.  

MAA has been a part of collaborative projects: launched the Ashoka University Student Scholarly Communication (AUSSC) with the HDFC Library, established the Academic Societies Collective, elected new Foundation Course Reps, worked on tools like Faculty Finder and Locate@Ashoka, and established  CASH-CADI guidelines for all Academic Societies.  

Bhargava tells The Edict that MAA has been using social media like Instagram to share “sections of policies like the General Policy Document to help students know that they can [...] avoid reading through tedious Undergraduate (UG) handbooks.” She mentions that the Q&A Group “is very very active and one of the most prized initiatives.” They “have busy and normal phases, such as 5-6 questions in a normal week”, and nearly 500 questions in a day during busier times like the Pass/Fail deadline.

For initiatives like Office Hours, Helpdesks and workshops, “quite a few people” attend;  the “first addition of Meet the Board Reps had at least 100 students who attended, Tech it Easy had 20-25 people, another workshop with Ministry of Technology had 200-300 students,” she says. 

The ministry has engaged with students through the Undergraduate Writing Programme (UWP) workshop on citations,  monthly feedback forms, initiatives like Meet your Representatives and Meet your Academic Societies and a Course Trajectory Planning Workshop. 

MAA conducted an awareness drive with Resident Assistants, partnered with the Environment Ministry for the Paper Trail project, held Reading circles, and an Alumni-student Peer Mentorship Program with 130+ signups. With the Ministry of Community Well-Being (MCWB), MAA conducted a survey and interviews with students and teaching fellows to propose academic accommodations for mental health. Since February, there has not been any update about the initiative.

In March 2025,  a policy on academic accommodations for student-athletes, a collaborative effort between MAA and the Sports Ministry, was passed. MAA launched a thesis and syllabus repository, a sheet to track academic fests and a Pass/Fail Crisis Guide. 

Despite an email by MAA on 6th January, stating that the handbooks would be released before pre-registration for Spring’25 semester, handbooks for several subjects, such as Political Science and PPE, are yet to be added. 

According to Bhargava, “the handbooks are dependent on the department or the Office of Academic Affairs,” and wherever the handbooks are not uploaded, they have “made sure students can approach the MAA or the Reps.” Course trajectories for several subjects on Pathways are also yet to be uploaded. For this, the case is similar to “the only places where they are not [visible] is where HOD approval is needed or the handbook is not out.”

(Edited by Srijana Siri)