A certain fiasco in Antaragni '08 reminded me of something that I was pissed at a while ago and why I was pissed at it. I am talking about the molestation incident during the concert. Those in the dark go here.
The debate very quickly got out of hand, with lots of frustrated IITians(endsems were going on at that time) using that forum to vent their irritation and what not. The whole thing as it stands now is a very funny farce, go through it to have a laugh.
So what really got me worked up was not the fact that IITians were blamed. Hell, any publicity is good publicity. I'm not here to point fingers at the LSR females for singling out the IITians for blame, or at the IITians for making a mockery of the whole article and posting MCP jokes on it, knowing it may put IITK's repute under some strain. IMO the blame lies with Hospi cell to a certain extent.
Like all colleges, IIT Kanpur has a Hospitality cell during during its cultural festival Antaragni. The way the Hospi cell works is, when a team reaches the Students' Activity Center, they are put under charge of a Hospitality volunteer(a guy in first year). The team members get their IDs at SAC before they are escorted to wherever they are lodged by the volley, who is supposed to look after their stay in the insti during the period of the festival.
The reason I blame the Hospi cell to some extent is because I had a talk with one of the volleys who got LSR and even he was not aware that there was a separate enclosure for females(which would have prevented the incident above). How do you expect the girls to know then? But obviously, pinning blame on only Hospi for this incident is fallacious, as there may have been other factors at work. But I have a lot of problems with its general working.
First of all the blame does not lie with the bachchaas for not having all the necessary intel, like the existence of a separate area for females in this case. They are not to be held responsible as they did not have any idea that they were supposed to know all this. Let me run through how exactly the whole process works for a first-yearite. The poor guys have been in the insti for a couple of months, and are yet to find their feet around the place, what with all the "informal interaction" and GBMs and midsems and what not. The lack of females in IIT and the brainwashing about Antaragni being some sort of free-for-all orgy is a very bad combination. To add to that, Hospi is hyped even more.
Now I was in the Hospi cell in my first year. My interview was actually decent, but somehow I got the feeling that I was only selected because there were less candidates from my hall. I thought this as I was asked nothing about Hospi other than a cliched question about whether I would offer to carry luggage for girls if they were finding it difficult to lug it around. I answered yes, I would out of common courtesy(I was actually asked to justify this, which I found a little stupid at that time). I later found out that you're "supposed" to say no, as that is not part of your "work description". The irony of these two words really cracks me up, as you'll see later. Basically, if you carry their luggage, the girls will "take advantage of you" and will "tell their friends that they made an IITian carry their luggage for them". Ouch, that's delicate IIT pride you're talking about. You don't hurt IIT pride, never mind the civil intent. So you say no.
Coming back to the "work description", from the time of selection to the festival, the volleys are not given any sort of formal instructions or training whatsoever. In fact, the only work they do is place mattresses at places where the coming teams would be staying. Once the festival starts, they are assigned a college when they arrive and told to take them where they're staying.
So two undesirable scenarios occur:
1. The volleys take their team to where they are supposed to stay and then just leave. Some of them even forget to give their mobile numbers to the team leaders. The teams are not given any sort of basic info about their accommodation, where the shops and competition areas are, whom to go to for info, where to go for food etc. Though this causes some vexation for the visiting teams, and leads to bad feedback in general about the Hospi cell, it is still way better then scenario #2.
2. The volleys act "too interested" in the colleges and not so much toe the line of decency as overshoot it by a good 100 yards. This pretty much happens due the Hospi hype and the bad combination mentioned above. They end up getting katofied(non-IITKians read rejected) from the colleges, not to mention the nose-dive that the reputation of the cell takes again.
Of course, these are not the only 2 things that happen. A decent number of volleys ensure that their colleges don't have any trouble finding their way around, and quite a few become good friends with them as well. But that's still not the majority sadly.
Also, let's clear up one thing. The bachchaas may be brainwashed and insufficiently instructed but that's no excuse for acting like satyromaniacs, at least in public. Nothing justifies that misdemeanor.
This year I had a talk with some first-yearites in the cell and the situation was exactly the same. In fact some aspects were apparently worse. One of my really good friends was a secy(they conducted the interviews) and he told me that the papers on which they gave marks to all the interviewees got lost. A bunch of secies(the ones who "know a lot of people") then got together, and selected bachchaas that they knew, while strictly conforming to a hall-quota basis. Wonderful.
All this peeves me even more because I really liked the idea of the Hospi cell when I first heard about it(and still do). IIT Kanpur is one of very few colleges that has a Hospi cell which actually assigns people to every single college. Prima facie, it seems to be a very good idea. But it is not implemented well at all.
One may argue that the volleys for the Hospi cell are not even needed, as the people who come for the festivals are old enough to find their way around the insti and should not be pampered with "attendants", which is also a wastage of first-yearite manpower. IMO even that would be better than the half-baked sham of a cell we have now.
So what's wrong? There is a huge communication gap between the secy and volley level. The volleys are basically out of it. They have no idea what to expect and what they're supposed to do. There should some sort of talk where the volleys are told about what their "work description" entails besides being fanatical zealots of sacrosanct IIT pride. They should be told about the basic etiquette expected from them towards other colleges, especially girls, and that they should befriend them and help them in their stay in the insti as only a good friend could. All this will only help them in getting the maximum back from the cell and maybe even some good acquaintances in the country.
