Teachers in Jadavpur University’s science faculty are circulating among first-year students who have just enrolled the names of four teachers from each department who they could contact if they are harassed on the campus or in hostels.

The list being handed to the freshers contains the names of the teachers and their phone numbers.

Teachers of the science faculty said they launched the initiative drawing lessons from the death of a first-year student, who was allegedly ragged and thrown from the second-floor balcony of the JU Main Hostel in August last year.

Similar lists will be handed to the first-year students of the engineering and arts faculties, too, officials said.

Psychiatrists and counsellors who spoke at a workshop at JU last Friday on teachers’ role in combating ragging said the teachers must be empathetic so first-year students open up if they face harassment in hostels or class.

Teachers must encourage students to confide in them, the experts said at the workshop.

Partha Pratim Roy, a professor of physics at JU, said a UGC team that visited the campus last September, following the death of the first-year student, sought to know from the teachers whether they had spoken to the freshers in classes about who they should approach if they were ragged.

Metro has reported that the UGC visit revealed the fact that most JU teachers were unaware of the various regulations the apex regulatory body had introduced in 2009 to curb ragging.

“We are informing the first-year students about the teachers they can approach any time if they face any form of harassment. The UGC told us to start the exercise while interacting with students in classes. We have started a bit earlier — during their first visit to the campus,” said Roy, also the secretary of the Jadavpur University Teachers’ Association (Juta).

First-year classes are yet to start at JU.

An internal committee that the university had set up to probe the death of the first-year student had in its report accused the teachers of stalling steps to curb ragging.

There is a “zero-tolerance-to-ragging” policy at JU but no effective initiatives have been taken by the teachers’ organisations to curb ragging, the report said.

“On the contrary, the committee received an instance that proves that sometimes individual teachers have diluted the anti-ragging initiatives taken by the greater community to curb the menace of ragging,” the report said.

A punishment awarded to two students found guilty of ragging in 2013 could not be implemented following opposition from students, who had gheraoed then vice-chancellor Souvik Bhattacharyya with support from a section of teachers.

The teachers’ association in a note circulated to its members on August 13, 2023, three days after the death of the 17-year-old student, said “common people will hate teachers” if they remain mute spectators to ragging.