Rose cure for ragging

Rose is helping stop ragging in colleges.

Guwahati: Rose is beautiful and it can serve a purpose too, for instance helping stop ragging in colleges.Senior students in Assam`s colleges are welcoming freshers with roses instead of subjecting them to ragging.

With the help and guidance of the Congress-affiliated National Students Union of India, the students are giving roses to the newcomers in a resolve to weed out the menace. Recently, a student of the Dr Rajindra Prasad Medical College in Himachal Pradesh`s Kangra valley, Aman Kachru, died after being tortured by senior students in the name of ragging. The programme was launched experimentally at the premier Cotton college in Guwahati and was being undertaken across all colleges and universities in the state. ``The seniors have taken to this programme very well and the enthusiasm among freshers is even more. The NSUI is receiving queries from students all over the state as to when the programme will be launched in their colleges,`` Jay Prakash, a student of the Veterinary College in Guwahati, said. The president of the NSUI`s unit in Assam, Jay Prakash, said the response from the student community was tremendous. It has now adopted `rose for ragging` as a nationwide agenda to fight ragging. He said that the students union bodies in over 80 percent of state colleges are NSUI-affiliated and anti-ragging squads have been activated in all colleges to ensure that no incident of ragging takes place. Last week nine students were suspended from Dibrugarh University in the state for alleged ragging of juniors. Bureau Report