New Delhi: The Delhi Technological University (DTU) after the much brouhaha over the agitation for the upgradation of the university from Delhi College of Engineering (DCE), which was a wing of the Delhi University (DU) earlier, has in its in-house students' newsletter - 'DTU Times' titled 'Is the protest against DCE to DTU justified?' appealed all its students to "think seriously and not go by emotions alone or by instigation from uninformed quarters."

The newsletter recounted all the activities of the university like the Engifest 2010, Techfest 2010 and the E-Summit 2010, which witnessed for the first time celebrities like Dr. Kiran Bedi and Rahul Bose as well as large number of CEOs appreciating the institution now a university and added that, "It appears as if someone from outside had suddenly injected poison & continues to misguide the DTU (DCE) community."

Warding off all the rumours by the leaders of the agitation in media floating the message that after the conversion, renowned MNCs & PSUs shall not visit DTU, the newsletter claimed that, "The fact is that all major MNCs including Microsoft, Nomura, Bank of America, Mckinsey, JP Morgan etc & India s leading companies like Tata Moters, Samsung engineering, L&T and major PSUs like Indian Oil, NTPC,BHEL, & EIL plus DRDO, Indian Navy are among the 90 plus which have already recruited this year and have made 514 offers as per the placement figures in the T&P. Many more companies are in pipeline."

Blaming the "motivated & prejudiced minds" leading the agitation, it stood tall to claim that on the day of protest (March 4, 2010) India's leading PSU namely EIL and two software MNCs Huawei and ZTE mobile were present in the campus.

Questioning the agitators, while declaring the base of their protest hollow, the letter clearly asked them, "Do they know that DU apart from signing degree and that on some occasion even with wrong spelling on the degree title have paid no attention what so ever to the academic issues?"

It also said that, academic reforms took a back seat in matters such as course curriculum & examination reforms in a premiere professional institution such as NSIT and DCE both affiliated to DU as the university paid no heed due to which courses remained stagnant for the last several decades.

Alleging the DU leaders for their claims over the revision of programmes to be the responsibility of the institution, it said that course curriculum & examination are an integral part and prime responsibility of the university & are neither determined nor finalized at the institution level.

Heading further, it added that, "It is not engineering courses alone, DU could not revise course curriculum of many non professional courses also and it is still struggling for the semester system in its colleges."

The article indicted the DU authorities and asked its students if they have received even a penny contribution/ funding from DU for any of the professional/ cultural/ research and innovation activities during last many years.

"We find that while the DCE authorities stretched their limits to support students even when DCE was a government institution, no support was ever forthcoming from DU," said the newsletter.

Clearing the air of shortage of faculty in the campus it said that ever since its inception in July 2009 not only the university has added to its faculty strength in good number, new regular faculty who were selected earlier joined the university in addition to around 60 contract faculty on regular scale also been recruited.

"Further near 93 lecturers position (including the positions for new programs) were advertised in December 2009 and as per the information with DTU Times approximately 3500 applications have been received and that the regular faculty recruitments through the duly constituted selection committees (as per the DTU Act) have already begun from March 5, 2010 are continuing," it added.

Talking about its initiatives in the infrastructure development, DTU Times claimed that, "None of the Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs), all of having campuses bigger than DTU, have yet come out with such like initiatives."

Positive feedbacks to the Vice Chancellor upon the conversion lined up from various top honchos as the letter ended with a plea to not to erode the goodwill of the institution which shall in the long run mar their own career prospects.

Following the newsletter, the Vice Chancellor of DTU, Prof. P.B. Sharma issued an appeal to the student community of the university saying, "It is our collective responsibility to work together to safeguard the interest of the student community, faculty, staff and also the goodwill of this institution.This appeal, therefore, is to appeal to your conscience to visualise the damage being done to the repute of your alma mater by your continued agitation. I on behalf of all my Deans and HODs appeal to you to attend your classes from tomorrow as the mid-term examinations will be held from March 15, 2010 at DTU and also at NSIT."

Taking about the expulsion of its two students namely Ravishekhar and Nitin Baraiya from the rolls of the institution / university, the VC said that, "We were forced to take this action as both of them despite our best efforts have continued to forcefully drag the students to violent protests, provoke students to use filthy language and led their agitation within the campus of the University."