The media reports about the party are exaggerated out of proportion.
Probably anyone who has ever been to a professional institute will understand that Freshers and Farewell are two important parties that make space in any academic calendar between the rigours of a Post graduate curriculum. Traditionally Seniors welcome the juniors with the freshers party and the juniors pay back with an equally grand farewell .... simple enough.
But Perhaps our media finds it a little difficult to understand and digest, not to mention the cops who harass everyone apart from criminals . Now as proven criminals are bringing hooliganism to the parliament, students are spending time in lockup for a reason like freshers party.
489 students from Symbiosis Institute of Management studies(SIMS) were arrested for something which is pretty much a part of their college tradition and had the permission of college administration. Agree that police may be right about the laws, but perhaps a warning with an immediate termination of that party would have been more than enough, shamelessly playing with the reputations, careers and lives of so many students (mostly innocent). In any case organizers must be responsible for taking care of liquor laws of the land rather than student, and most of those 489 had absolutely nothing to do with organizing the party.
As if the police atrocity wasn’t enough the students are being branded as morally corrupt by the highly irresponsible media who doesn’t think twice before exaggerating the event for cheap publicity , and for the highest selling newspaper in India which terms it as a ‘Rave party’ despite of police establishing that there was no hint of narcotics.
Liquor bottles worth 18000 which was seized by the police amounts to something a little more than 36 per head for 489 students, enough to establish that either most of the students were sober or they consumed alcohol well within the permissible limit, greater chances of the former. This effectively means that a large number of totally innocent people were harassed by the police and media played a larger role in humiliating them to the core for a crime of participating in their annual batch event.
I hope the Symbiosis Management stands by its students instead of alienating them during this difficult and traumatic period, that’s the only glimour of hope till Times of India figures out what rave parties actually are.
