GC University Lahore students protest

Lahore, Several students of the GCU along with their parents protested outside the university main gate on Thursday against the university decision of declaring several students ineligible to appear in the annual exams.

Students from the intermediate classes were holding placards inscribed with their demands, while their parents raised slogans against the “rude” attitude of the university administration. The protestors also staged a sit in, blocking any kind of traffic to the main university road.

The GCU administration wrote to the Board of Intermediate and Secondary Education (BISE) not to allow nearly 90 intermediate students to appear in the annual exams because of short attendance. There are nearly 15 part I and 72 part II students who have been declared ineligible by the university administration for not fulfilling the 75 percent attendance criterion. The administration claimed to have informed parents about the decision before declaring them ineligible. However, parents maintained that the university administration only notified them after declaring students ineligible and did not “bother” to intimate them beforehand. They demanded that the administration should show the correspondence to the media if they were in the right. Talking to Daily Times, father of a student said the administration accepts that students were regular in classes before January and the attendance shortage started only afterwards. He said students had to miss classes at times because of the security situation. “Students should not be persecuted for missing just a few classes…the decision will cost students one full academic year,” he said, adding that these demands were falling on the “deaf ears”, as the attitude of administration with parents was very “rude”. He alleged when parents asked the vice chancellor to bring the correspondence to the media, he plainly refused to do so.

Talking to reporters, Intermediate Studies Director Professor Anjum Nisar said these students have been declared ineligible because they did not meet the 75 percent attendance criterion set by the BISE. He said the university administration has been informing students from time to time. To a question on informing the parents, he said the administration was not bound to intimate parents.