Security in Hostel Sector

I finished the work I had planned to do about the message board and left the lab at 4 a. m. As I was on the way to Cauvery, I found some of security guards were in deep sleep when on duty. This led me to check security in some hostels and Office of Hostel Management. As a fall-out of this action, I found seven security guards in deep sleep and one in suspicious condition. Watching on-duty security guards deep in sleep was funny on one side and equally alarming on the other. It’s most undesired situation as far as the security of the institute is concerned.

Most of the guards, when awakened, could not judge what they were up to. One guard, rubbing his eyes, asked me to write my name in visitor’s register, one guard gave ten thousand excuses for sleeping and finally begged pardon. At one place the intercom receiver was put down from instrument and as per the guard’s statement, he had done so to avoid disturbing phone calls.

This whole exercise of checking the security arrangement was unplanned but I decided to go ahead with checking the places after seeing. It's is mainly because I am concerned and being a representative I need to be concerned about the security in the hostels. This is especially in the context of various construction activities going in the hostel sector and presence of numerous workers due to construction. In saying that I don't want to show the workers in bad light but it's my sincere feeling that if we overlook these lapses in security, we may have face unexpected consequences. A stitch in time will save nine.

I have given a detailed report to the authority. They have promised me to take severe action. But considering conditions in which these security guards are recruited, considering the meager salary they are paid by this private security service, and considering the duty officer also is caught in this, I have requested the authorities not to impose a monetary fine on the individuals. I have asked them to summon these people and issue a memo to the security agency with a stern warning of action in case there personnel are again found failing in performing the duty.

Students Board Ready for Operation

The Students Board is ready for operation and can be accessed at
http://students.iitm.ac.in/forum/. Testing is in progress and the board will be available for usage by students from 25th December.

The logins are created as per the roll numbers. The passwords are generated and will be sent on 24th Dec morning to individual smail account. An email account boardadmin@iitm.ac.in is being created which will be operated by student administrator, Arun Kumar. Guests to this forum can view some key forums but can not participate in discussion and also can not read the topics of some sub-forums.

Key forums are created and can be seen on the notice boards. Essential moderation settings are done for these forums. There are forums for Exec Wing members, SAC members, and Dean Students under Open Forums. There is one Lost and Found Section also created. This will certainly reduce spamming through mailing lists. New forums can be created as and when they will be requested for, or when need will arise.

There will be three Root Administrators: Arun Kumar, Shantibhushan Sale and myself. Apart from them there will be moderators for different forums. e.g. Each Hostel General Secretary will be the moderator for the separate forum for his hostel.

Message Board Installation Completed

A few minutes back I was informed by Bhushan and Arun that message board installation was completed. I have started testing the installation and has suggested them to create some forums. We will have a detailed discussion today evenings in Office of DoS. Configuring and testing of this board will be done in the coming week.

Library Needs to be Kept Open Round-the-clock

To DoAC,

There is some feedback about closing the library earlier during the week
at the year-ending.

Since a good reading room and discussion room facility is made available
to students, more and more number of students have started using these
places for studying, not only during examination period but also rest of
the year. Now students feel that earlier closing of library during
year-ending will cause a great inconvenience. Good thing is many have
formed habit of studying that environment which is certainly good sign as
far as their academic progress is concerned and I am sure that you will
certainly appreciate that the students should be encouraged by all
possible means to study as much as possible with full focus. Keeping
library open round the clock will be an important measure towards this.

I am forwarding a representative email from Ashok, a post-graduate student of Chemical Engg. There are many more students, including myself, who echo with Ashok's views.

May I humbly request to reconsider your decision and keep library open to students for the whole day. Albeit, there may be put a time constraint on the book transactions.

With best regards
Prasad
Member of Library Advisery Committee

EFSI Endowment Lecture by Shree Venkatramani

In the morning I received a call from office of DoAC asking me to be present for the lecture as I will be presenting the speaker, Shree Venkatramani, a bouquet. In any case I was going to attend the lecture. This was EFSI Endowment Lecture arranged every year in our institute. Shree Venkatramani is the Managing Director of India Pistons Ltd, a major supplier of pistons and piston rings to almost all the automobile manufacturers. He was given welcome in the Board Room with high tea. Somehow they thought it alright to invite me also for joining them for high tea. It turned out to be quite interesting interaction.

The lecture itself was quite a revealation. He spoke on “Changing face of Industrial Relations from the context of Globalization”. The speaker has seen his organisation going through various phases since globalization started in 1984. All the experience of the distinguished speaker was visible throughout the lecture.

After the lecture, I had a brief chat with him. The mention of Tata Motors was obvious when he asked about my background. It was quite a good feeling when talking about 407 and Spacio, BS2 emission development of these two vehicles.

Hike in Cable Connection fees

Executive Committee of the Staff Club has DECIDED to increase the amount of subscription to Rs 75 per semester per students (from Rs 50). Thus any hostel with @225 inmateswill end up paying ~ Rs 3125 per month which is certainly a huge amount.Bigger hostels like Cauvery, Krishna are already paying ~ Rs 5000 whichwill increase to Rs 7500 with this hike as they use two connectios. This is especially uneconomic when a much cheaper alternative is available inmarket that is DTH. DTH connection can reduce these expenses to ~10% ofthis and also the equipment will be owned by the hostel.

There are DTH services provided by Dish TV and one by Star-ESPN network.Please study their packages. You can get information on internet.

In fact, General Secretaries of Cauvery, Krishna, Sarayu had decided tochange over to DTH in June/July itself. But as some popolar music channelsand sports channels were not available so we cancelled the plan.

May be this is time for us to seriously think about continuing staff club cable connection. DTH is working very well in Sindhu. Other hostels can follow this route.

Students evaluate performance of Campus Cafe

There is a mixed reaction to the running of canteen by institute staff that was previously outsourced canteen known as Nandhinee. Most of the comments/complaints were oral. So I decided to conduct a brief survey. I would like to present the outcome of this survey to you. I have found that all the respondents (100.00%) have stated clearly in their feedback that the performance of Campus Café is not up to the mark.

After compiling the feedbacks, I have interpreted the feedback in the following way.* When the comments of respondents are categorized on the basis of quality, quantity, service and hygiene, it can be noticed that except for quality, Campus Café even fails to open account for other criterions. There are some respondents (9%) who have said that they are satisfied with quality, where they mean the taste of the items served is good. But then there are 74% who report that the quality is bad. 17% respondents have not commented about quality of the items served in the café.

Not all respondents have mentioned their opinion about all the criterions. Their opinion is counted as neutral. Perhaps if they were asked categorically to evaluate the café on these criterions, we would have had smaller percentage under Neutral.

There are more respondents who have not commented upon the service provided in the café. It is understandable as the café works on the self service by the customers.

One thing worth mentioning here is that many of the respondents have strongly appreciated the special tea served in the Campus Café. Also there are comments which say that the rates of items are less as compared to outsourced canteen. But the question is at what cost this low prices can be set?

It is a fact that the largest number of customers for the Campus Café is student community and, surprisingly, their representation on the Canteen Committee has been nil. It is a point that need to be noted by the authorities and should include a student member in the committee as it is done in practically every committee related to facilities in the campus.

Consolidated Results:

Parameter (Percentage of total respondents)
(Good,Bad,Neutral)

Quality (9,74,17)
Variety (0,74,26)
Service (0,65,35)
Hygiene (0,78,22)
Overall (0,100,0)

* As the feedback was invited, technically, it is not a survey that is based on usual random sampling. The percentages presented above are based on the interpretation of the comments/observations willingly given by students on a particular criterion.

I hope the Canteen Committee will take enough corrective actions to ensure better functioning of the Campus Cafe.

Email Accounts for getting Feedback about Facilities

Email accounts for feedback about facilities:

Some email accounts can be created to get feedback from the students about various facilities, transport, alumni affairs involving students and external enquiries. It may be appreciated that these accounts are easy to remember and they will eliminate the need of knowing name/contact of the person accountable for a particular facility. Thus feedback can be given by students pretty quickly and the feedback will be documented properly. To elaborate this point further, I will explain how these accounts can be used as the link between a particular portfolio and the general student body.

transport@iitm.ac.in
Students can give their feedback about the transport facility. They can also register complaint about the facility.
sfc@iitm.ac.in or facilities@iitm.ac.in
Students will report the complaints about facilities in Students Facility Centre, power laundry, eateries (not hostel dining halls) etc. They can also suggest any new addition to the present facilities.
network@iitm.ac.in
Students can write their problems/suggestions about the internet and intranet access to this account. The problems can be forwarded to the newly proposed Campus Network Users Committee for the further action.
aaincharge@iitm.ac.inThis will be used by the Alumni Affairs In-Charge who is the link between Alumni Associations, Office of Alumni Affairs and current student body.

These accounts can be displayed appropriately so that they strike students’ attention. They can be displayed at respective facilities also. These accounts can be operated by the respective in-charges in General Secretary’s Council.

Email accounts for Hostel General Secretaries:

There are email accounts created by hostel names. There is ambiguity in minds of most Hostel General Secretaries upon who operates these accounts. Perhaps the wardens are operating these email accounts. In order to facilitate a better communication from secretaries to students and from students to secretaries I suggest creating email accounts for General Secretaries of all hostels. The Ids can be

gsalak@iitm.ac.in, gsbrahms@iitm.ac.in, gscauvery@iitm.ac.in, gsganga@iitm.ac.in, gsgodav@iitm.ac.in, gsjamuna@iitm.ac.in, gskrishna@iitm.ac.in, gsmandak@iitm.ac.in, gsnarmada@iitm.ac.in, gssaras@iitm.ac.in, gssindhu@iitm.ac.in, gssarayu@iitm.ac.in, gssharav@iitm.ac.in, gstapti@iitm.ac.in

To take this point further, all other hostel council members can also be given email ids using a combination of abbreviation of the post and the hostel name as given above.