The General Championships have always been about one’s attachment to one’s own hall, generally termed as “Hall Tempo”. These events must have been introduced with an aim to foster the all-round development of the students. But the lofty ideals of this aim seem to be waning as the GC has become sort of a ‘war’ where one needs the victory at any cost, be it after the sacrifice of moral values and the sense of fair-play. An example can be cited of the event of Product Design this year which saw a weird set of proceedings.
Firstly, let’s have a look at what happened exactly in the course of time. The event was held on the evening of 9th March. As the event progressed, it soon started running late as per the schedule due to extended question and answer sessions as told by few of the participants. One of the judges had given indications that he wanted to go early as he was scheduled to go somewhere outside Kharagpur next morning and he had to pack things up at home. After repeated calls, he decided to leave in the middle of the event when three Halls of Residences namely LBS, MT and HJB were yet to show their presentation. With no alternative left, the event progressed with only two judges evaluating the teams. The conditions were completely changed and the way the result was to be declared could not be decided at that time. The General Secretary Technology TSG and the participating halls decided to seal the result in an envelope and to decide about the result formulation in the subsequent meeting. That envelope ought to be kept at a common place e.g. Gymkhana, but due to some reasons, one GSec Tech of TSG took that envelope with him.
The envelope was found torn in the next meeting and had been packed inside another envelope as claimed by General Secretaries of some of the Halls. A vigorous discussion followed and after a session of allegations, people were crying foul at the way the events had unfolded. Now the point was that some people might have the knowledge of marks and they could have devised a formula to declare the results to get the best out of those marks and few of the halls may take advantage of this prior knowledge. Some of the Halls wanted that the points should not be given for the event in the GC, but the results should be declared and certificates should be given, few were asking to scrap the GC technology and some were even asking for a strict action against the office bearers. As per the rules, all Halls must be unanimous in taking the decision to scrap a GC event in such scenario. Later the judges said in the next meeting that the marks were not tampered and so results should be declared. Finally, the result was declared and the event was not scrapped.
Though we completely believe in the process, there are many questions which arise after analysing this event.
Even if the marks were not tampered, isn’t this the responsibility of General Secretary Technology to keep these documents safely and when the envelope was found torn, whose responsibility was that?
Why was the event running late, was few of the teams given extra time and why were they not penalised for taking the extra time?
Some people might be of the opinion that what is the need of creating such buzz about the set of events when everything has been managed to come to terms. The point of discussion is not about settling for a conclusion, it is about the way IITKGP inmates are participating in GCs. It is about the limits that one had to cross, whoever he might be (As nothing could be proved that whose fault it was, we can’t blame anyone directly), that he was so eager to see the results. It is about the improper blend of Hall Tempo and moral values. It is about the way people are not ready to accept their defeats and at the same time contain themselves after their wins.
A person is defined by the IITKGP tag first and then his hall comes into play. So, GC must be played with true sportsman spirit with a sense of fair-play to ensure healthy competition among the inmates of the campus rather than a tense war among Halls.
