Students of 7 DU-affiliated colleges issue 72-hour ultimatum

The students of seven colleges affiliated with Dhaka University lifted their road blockade in Nilkhet intersection after issuing a 72-hour ultimatum to the authorities for publishing fresh results after reevaluating the exam papers. 

Agitating students took to the streets on Wednesday to press home their three-point demands, creating severe traffic congestion on the Azimpur-Mirpur road causing immense suffering to commuters.

After one and a half hours, they withdrew their protest around 1:00pm after receiving assurance from the authorities of meeting up their demands.

Their demands include --- promotion of students who failed in the first, second and third years' examinations (2017-18, 2018-19, and 2019-20 sessions) due to Covid pandemic; a permanent solution to the results debacle and a revamp in the evaluation process of the philosophy department's exams.

Nahid Uddin Tareq, a student of the history department of Dhaka College, said the seven colleges are struggling with multiple problems such as authorities' failure to take examinations on time, delay in publishing results, poor evaluation of exam papers, and "unusual number of fails" in examinations, academic building crisis and lack of adequate teachers.

"The four-hour final examinations were held in two hours, which created a negative effect on results. Only four out of 190 candidates of the Bangla department in our college have passed the exam," Sharif Uddin, a student of the Bangla department of Poet Nazrul Government College, said.

Nusrat Keya, a marketing major at Eden Women's College, said "As the administration is not complying with any of our demands, we are forced to take to the streets."

"We gave a 72-hour ultimatum to the authorities concerned to reach a logical solution to this," she added.

The students also warned of tougher movement if the authorities fail to reach a logical solution of the problems within this period.