By IANS,
Kanpur: Instead of banning jeans on college campuses why not train girls in martial arts and empower them to check eve-teasing, suggested a student Thursday as the decision by four women colleges in this Uttar Pradesh district prohibiting western outfits drew strong criticism.
To keep the menace of eve-teasing at bay, the Acharya Narendra Deo College, Dayanand Girls Degree College, Sen Balika College and Johari Devi Degree College in Kanpur have banned students from wearing jeans, tight tops, sleeveless blouses and tight-fitting clothes on the campus
Tulika Saxena, a B.Sc student of Dayanand college, finds the decision “strange”.
The colleges, she said, can offer “martial arts training programmes” for girl students so that they can defend themselves and “counter roadside eve-teasing”.
“It would be much better if the college authorities sit down with police and other officials to formulate a strategy to check the menace,” Saxena said .
Neelam Chaturvedi, who works with women’s rights group Sakhi Kendra, says: “The move by the colleges is totally irrational”.
“It appears that college authorities feel that eve-teasers only target girls wearing jeans. I can narrate umpteen incidents in which boys misbehaved with girls wearing salwar kameez,” Chaturvedi told IANS.
Terming the decision by the college authorities as “illogical”, Deepshikha Dubey, a second year graduate student of the Dayanand college, said: “Jeans are the most common outfit worn by college students, particularly because unlike other clothes you need not wash it after every use.”
Majority of the college students who come from other parts of the state and stay away from their homes prefer wearing jeans and T-shirts, as they don’t have to bother about their maintenance, she said, adding that the college authorities’ move to ban jeans cannot be justified under any circumstance.
Many students up in arms against the decision say if the college authorities were so much serious about checking eve-teasing incidents, they should have taken help from police and other security authorities.