Over a 100 students protesting against newly instituted heightened security protocol remain in the cold outside Gate 2 as of 01:00 am on Friday. Additionally, around 50 students are gathered at the inner side of the gate, and are consistently bringing reinforcements (water, coffee, snacks, and winter-wear) for those outside. Students are prepared to spend the night outside the campus, in 10-degree Sonipat cold until their demands are met.
The gathering, first congregated at the Atrium at 8:00 pm on Thursday, staged a walk-out from Gate 2. While they peacefully tapped out of campus then, students in the gathering declared they would not comply with baggage scanning and metal detector screening to sign back into campus. Effectively, they will not re-enter campus until the administration unequivocally agrees to pull back its new invasive security procedures.
Protestors are being prevented from using washroom facilities inside campus. Several students went to speak to a Warden regarding a potential makeshift sanitation facility for students protesting outside. The Warden allegedly replied that she was unable to reach her points of contact within the Residence Life Office to seek approval.
There has been no response or acknowledgement of the mobilisation and the demands from any member of the administration. At around 11:15 pm, multiple Ashoka University Student Government (AUSG) members were unable to access the AUSG email ID. They were not able to log in, and emails addressed to them “failed” to send. At 12:26 am, the Vice Chancellor’s Office, in an email addressed to the student body, said “The SG email address has not been disabled by the administration.”
Yatish Arya, Assistant Professor, Department of Economics, is present at the gathering inside the gate, standing alongside students. It is easy to catch alcohol bottles through scanners but harder to catch more harmful drugs, he says, so, “... naturally, there is a possible ‘substitution effect’ with students previously consuming alcohol switching to potentially harder substances easier to sneak past the scanners and detectors.”
The Edict spoke to AUSG President Aditi Warrier (ASP’25), who said that nothing can be said definitively – but, “we have not been sending any spam emails or done anything else that could have possibly violated any Google Workplace policy.” Additionally, multiple attempts to call IT, the Dean of Student Affairs (DSA) (more than 15 times) and the Residence Life Office, all went unanswered.
Warrier tells The Edict that while the AUSG has no proof that the administration deactivated their email ID, “it really seems unlikely that it was anything else because we weren’t even doing anything with the email.” Warrier says the email ID might have been re-enabled due to the immediate “uproar of student backlash.”
The only two people within the administration that she was able to reach, Warrier says, are Registrar Sachin Sharma and Assistant Registrar Sanjay Gehlot. When she pressed on the Registrar that the student protestors were willing to “stick it out” until they could walk in without scanners, he “abruptly hung up on her.” The Assistant Registrar, on the other hand, is out of town and also unable to reach the Registrar. Reportedly, Sharma’s phone is “busy.”
As of 01:30 am, students are throwing laundry bags in and out of campus over Gate 2, in defiance of the new bag scanners. Chants of ‘Inquilab zindabad,’ and ‘Dar gaye, dar gaye, Ashoka admin dar gaye,’ continue to resonate.
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