Tirunelveli: Students protest professor’s ‘vulgar language’

The first year post-graduate students of the history department complained that one of their assistant professors, Vinoth Vincent Rajesh ‘spoke vulgarly’ during class hours and misbehaved with the students. As this continued, the girl students complained this to the department head and to the university registrar last month.

The registrar assured the students to conduct an enquiry, but did nothing. Later, when the students again approached him, as the assistant professor threatened to fail the students who complained against him, the registrar was reported to have warned the students not to come again with such complaints.

Suspecting that the university administration was trying to save the assistant professor, Vinoth Vincent Rajesh, the girls sent a complaint to the principal secretary, higher education, Apoorva, who is also the MS university’s convenor committee member.

However, as the assistant professor on Monday was again complained to have threatened the students, about 20 students including 12 girls sat on a sit-in protest on Wednesday. The second year students of the department too joined the protest.

We too have the same problem and when some of us lodged a complaint against the assistant professor, who handled ancient history paper, he failed us in his paper in the second semester,’ complained a second year student. However, in the revaluation two students who had failed, scored top marks in the subject.

The assistant professor contacted media persons through one of his Chennai-based media friends and said that his friendly and frank gesture towards the students has been “wrongly misinterpreted by the girl students” and hence the problem.