The university’s new gate policy, including elaborate screenings and baggage scanning, has sparked significant dissent among students. Expressed through online discussions and petitions, this tension highlights a deeper issue of balancing freedoms. Isaiah Berlin’s framing of positive freedom (the freedom to) and negative freedom (the freedom from) offers a useful lens to understand the conflict. Institutions like universities, survive on shared rules to balance these freedoms, but the current changes get that wrong. While institutional policies may be driven by legal and operational necessities and concerns for student safety, the approach to their enforcement and the lack of student consultation raise critical concerns about respect for student voices.
Prohibiting students from bringing substances onto campus does little to curb underage or illegal consumption; instead, it pushes these activities to riskier, unmonitored locations outside the university premises. While the institution cannot actively condone substance consumption, policies that push these activities off-campus only heighten the risks students face. By prioritising accountability over responsibility, such measures fail to address substance use effectively and may even be counterproductive to the institutions’ goals of care and commitment to student safety.
However, the policy cannot realistically be rolled back now, as doing so would invite the very legal liabilities it seeks to avoid. By implementing these measures, the university has acknowledged the risks of unregulated entry, such as the potential for students to bring in illicit substances. Under the Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances (NDPS) Act, 1985, any lapse in enforcement could be construed as complicity in enabling the presence of illegal substances. Similarly, the Juvenile Justice (Care and Protection of Children) Act, 2015, holds institutions accountable for safeguarding minors from harmful environments, including exposure to substances. Logically, rolling back the policy would not just undermine these acknowledgements but could also be interpreted as condoning such behaviours, exposing the institution to heightened legal and operational vulnerabilities. Any downstream effect of consequences does nothing for this fact, rendering efforts to strengthen systems like CADI and other deterring measures like counselling sessions null and void from a legal standpoint, as the university has now formally acknowledged that they know students bring substances in through the gate.
Beyond the policy, the methodology and communication of the administration needed to be different. Though the suggestion has appeared over the years, the sudden rollout came with no conversation with students. This aversion to open discourse was starkly evident when, over the past two days, the atrium was inexplicably flooded with water and filled with over two hundred flower pots, to deter sit-in protests. While the policy may rest on strong legal grounds and institutional responsibilities, the administration’s approach raises the question: why such a pronounced aversion to open student discussion? This trend is not new. In May 2024, students planning to protest at the convocation were warned of potential consequences, including being barred from the event. The continual concern here lies not necessarily with the university's stance but with the method of its implementation. A blanket perception of student disagreement as disruptive rather than constructive undermines not only the university's values but also its fundamental purpose as a space for intellectual and social growth. The means of achieving institutional goals matter profoundly—it is about more than just dissent. It is about fostering transparency, sharing information, and affording students the respect and acknowledgement they deserve in decisions that directly impact their lives.
This situation forces fundamental questions for the administration to consider moving forward. Institutions have a responsibility to survive, but educational institutions, in particular, embody a paradox. They operate with the scalability, efficiency, and structure of other institutional bodies while intending to nurture something more—student growth, individuality, and subjectivity. This is a tenuous balance that will often erupt into conflict, with students pulling in one direction and the administration, tasked with ensuring the organisation’s survival, in the other. However, the key question to take forward is why is this a problem. Students need to be able to protest and administrators need to protect the institution; edging out one or the other (on either side) creates a false sense of mutual exclusivity. This tenuous tug-of-war is not something to curb, but rather a necessary part of institutional survival and individual growth, and therefore needs space.
The writer is the Department co-Editor, Opinions.
Views expressed are personal.
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