College is Closing!

That's it then! Five years and two degrees later I'm leaving the great and well renown Anna University. I just visited the site the other day, and I found that our University is what is technically and officially described "a unitary type of University offering higher education in Engineering, Technology and allied Sciences relevant to the current and projected needs of the society."

All balls, of course.

Further, the website states "Besides promoting research and disseminating knowledge gained therefrom, it fosters cooperation between the academic and industrial communities." (If you'd care to tickle your funny-bone by reading the rest of that ridiculously pretensions (not to mention badly written) gasconade, by all means go ahead - here's the link.) Nothing could, really, be further from the truth. I don't mean to knock it, after all, it IS my alma mater (all right, fine! I DO mean to knock it!) but still, there has to be a limit to the amount of delusional claptrap the University Office releases. I mean, worrying isn't the word. I wonder if they managed to type this out with a straight face. What's even more scary is that they actually might believe it...

The dress code ban is rollicking along, with everyone really ignoring the rather refreshing and independent views of our Esteemed Vice-Chancellor. In this article, Mr. Viswanathan shows his opposition to students appearing in casuals stating that some of the boys come to classes sporting T-shirts with "vulgar writings". Now that's an interesting story:

What actually happened was that the VC was on one of his customary Terror Trips around the campus and went straight to one of our departments, which, curiously enough, has a reputation of being rather forward looking. So he stomps in and, on seeing the students in their colouful attire, totally blows his top:

"SO!!" He shouts, "Why wearing tee-baniyan??"

The students in their colourful attire, not being aware of the quaint and equally colourful term "tee-baniyan", look rather non-pulssed.

"From now on," he continues, "People cannot wear tee-baniyans to college."

The class didn't know how to respond to this perplexing promulgation, so they did the safe thing in responding by continuing to look stunned.

After a bit of a lecture on Tamil and Indian Culture (typical PMK rhetoric), he left by advising the class on what he considered the "correct clothes" for college wear. He told the class not wear white shirts, as they are see through, not wear black shirts as they are depressing and not to wear red, green, pink, yellow, violet or orange as they are loud. As a final parting shot, he advised people wearing black and white shirts to avoid sitting together as it "causes contrast" and thus prevents the process of knowledge transfer from the sadly contrasted teacher to the class in general.

And, after he left, (because we started tracing the genesis of "vulgar writings") he came upon two boys in "tee-baniyans" that caught his ire for two reasons:

a) They were both black, and so, indubitable, depressed him.

b) They had rather.. um.. interesting captions - one having the pithy maxim "Fuck You!" emblazoned across it in neon green, and the other being rather more restrained in terms of literal discourse but no doubt making up for it pictorially, had a middle finger splashed across. Taciturn, indeed, but equally expressive. A picture is worth a thousand words and all that, no doubt....

Anyway, to cut a long story short (too late for that now, I guess), the VC did not, as the song goes "Look On The Bright Side Of Life" (in any case, he seems to have an aversion to bright colours) and as soon as possible complained to the press (see here again) about "vulgar writings" on tee shirts.

Talking about the website, you really should have a look at it - it's quite terrible. They've spruced up the front page now, so it's marginally better. You can have a look here if you want, but why they have to show the picture of the bugger sitting on the lawn is beyond me. It's always there... So he's Anna - big deal.

And the worst thing - here's the link to the "official notice" of cellphones being banned. It's absolutely ghastly - look at the page... I mean my cousin is seven and she could design a better page than that. You'd think as a "unitary type of University" blah blah that they'd make it a little sexier, wouldn't you? Crap - they have departments and departments of software engineers coming out and they design a page like this?!? Makes me sick. Here's the page.

Anyway, so that's that. I've been working on a website over the last few weeks for the oncoming World Cup. If you haven't visited the site as yet, here's the link. Among other things, I've been thinking of starting a blog to air my political views, and I'll be sure to put the link up as soon as it materialises.