DU students take to roads for safe campus

Students of Dhaka University held protest rallies to make a safe campus and launched campaigns to control the vehicles in the campus area.

At 11am on Sunday, students started gathering at the foot of the anti-terrorist Raju monument where they observed a minute of silence by taping their mouths and eyes to symbolize the inaction of the administration for a safe campus and pressed an 11-point demand for a safe campus.

During the campaign, students stopped various vehicles inside the campus area and redirected them if they found the vehicles unwanted in the campus. After that they went to the important roads of the campus to control traffic in the campus area.

Most of the students are from the 2019-20 and 2020-21 academic session of Dhaka University.

"Everyday 37,000 regular students move around the campus putting their life in security risk. Last Friday, a woman was dragged to death on the campus by a private car," one of protesters said, demanding to ensure a safe campus for students.

"This campus is not a racing ground but during night time, outsiders come to the campus and most often they do car racing and motorcycle racing. Heavy vehicles also move around the campus which is very risky for the students. Anything could happen anytime," another student said, seeking anonymity.

Imran Hossain Fahim, a student of Bijoy Ekattor hall who participated in a 'vehicles-control' campaign in DU area, was injured by an autorickshaw, when he tried to stop it as it was entering the campus area with two of its passengers playing vuvuzelas (flute) with intense sound.

Sir AF Rahman Hall, Begum Ruqayyah Hall and Shamsunnahar Hall students are the most bothered by extremely loud sounds of vehicles and outsider's chaos since the FIFA World Cup 2022 started, as there are big screens with sound systems set up by Dhaka University's Chhatra League unit for showing matches.

The screens are at the Haji Mohammad Mohsin Hall Field, TSC premises and Soparjito Swadhinata premises, where thousands of outsiders come to see world cup matches and make extremely loud sounds with vuvuzelas and other instruments.

"We came here to study, not to see such an awkward situation. I have an exam on 4 December but I could not study because of loud sounds," Bushra Zaman, a student of Shamsunnahar Hall told UNB.

In Facebook posts, many other students of different halls also expressed that they couldn't study due to noise levels.

Protesting students have submitted a memorandum to the vice-chancellor regarding the demands.

Their demands are to control all types of vehicles in the campus area and to ensure punishment if anyone disobey the law, to support Rubina Akter's family to get the justice, to set up checkposts in every entry point of the campus, to allow only registered and labelled rickshaws and to determine the fare by establishing the control of administrative authority, to set up a fixed place for floating shops and administrative control on them, to provide ID cards to all the students and to strictly restrict some areas for outsiders, to extract drug addicts and drug peddlers from the cameras, to bring the whole campus under CCtv camera surveillance and to set up adequate lampposts in the campus, to dissolve all the pending allegations in proctor office, to make sure the accountability of proctorial team to ensure the safe campus and to ensure all the claims by issuing official notice.

During the raid, students caught two drug dealers red-handed with 12 packets of cannabis in front of the Ruqayyah hall gate and both of the drug suppliers live in the campus area. Later they were handed over to the proctorial team.

DU Proctor Prof AKM Golam Rabbani said, "Proctorial Team arrested a woman drug dealer with packets of cannabis from Dhaka University (DU) area. The detained woman has been handed over to Shahbagh police station."

Mentioned, since the students came out on the roads to make the campus safe, the amount of public vehicles notably decreased and the campus area looks cleaner and safer.

Earlier on 2 December, Rubina Akter, 45, was dragged to death by a private car from Shahbag to Nilkhet, which moved DU students to stand up for a safe campus.