Friday, December 23, 2005

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.

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Thursday, December 22, 2005

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.

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