Colleges & varsities reopen to new normal
BHUBANESWAR: Things had changed vastly since the final year students of undergraduate (UG), postgraduate (PG) and diploma courses had last been on their college and university campuses nine months ago.
The usual camaraderie and warmth was missing with cautious students maintaining social distance and myriad-coloured masks hiding faces. Some students wearing surgical gloves made the atmosphere all the more grim.
Like the rest, Rajdhani College here welcomed its students by following the Covid-19 guidelines issued by the higher education department. Sanitiser was sprayed on their hands before they could enter the classrooms. Once in class, they were made to sit far apart from each other in order to ensure adequate physical distance between them.
Abinash Behera, a final-year UG student of botany honours, said they could not sit together in groups as usual for obvious reasons. “I was surprised to see even the most boisterous of students being aware of the magnitude of the situation and obeying the rules fearing Covid. Besides, we were refraining from greeting each other with hugs, something which would come naturally to us before. Even before drinking the water available on the campus, we were enquiring about its hygiene. To put it shortly, fear and suspicion was written large on everyone’s mask,” he smiled.
The other colleges and universities too saw a thin attendance on the first day. “We have 64 students in our class, but only 20 of them came on Day I,” Sourabh Singh, final year PG student of philosophy, Utkal University, said. Higher education minister Arun Kumar Sahoo visited some colleges here to oversee their preparedness.