Editorial: Disoriented scholars

The Jakarta Post   |  Fri, 02/13/2009 10:06 AM  |  Opinion

The death of Bandung Institute of Technology (ITB) student Dwiyanto Wisnugroho last week has added insult to the injury plaguing the country’s educational system.

Not only has such a physical abuse-prone program, known as Student Orientation, been banned for instances of violence at one of Indonesia’s oldest universities, but also almost everywhere else in the country. The activity amounts to a mockery of students’ intelligence as it spreads fear and terror to sophomores, who may be given no choice but to follow the rules instilled by power-hungry seniors.

In many universities and schools, orientation programs have turned into a breeding ground for revenge. Older students get to organize the programs because they were made suffer when they underwent them as newcomers. The bullying motive is obvious and the opportunity comes when the junior students arrive.

The purpose of a student orientation program, or whatever it may be called, has nothing to do with – and can even contradict – the noble goal of introducing the students to their new academic environment, when rookies are forced to crawl in the mud or paint their faces white under the glowing and endless barks of the “big brothers”.

Geodesy student Dwiyanto died after walking to a field, a distance of around 1.2 km, and hiking up a 100-meter slope at noon, despite his complaints of back pain that Saturday. He began foaming at the mouth and was rushed to hospital, where he later died.

In 1996, the ITB orientation program led to the deaths of a high school student and a member of the student regiment after an exhausting march. Police have found no evidence of physical abuse as Dwiyanto’s family refused an autopsy and may lack proof to charge those responsible for the program in 1996 with criminal offenses.

But that does not justify the use of force to obtain new students’ loyalty or their submission to senior students, under the guise of an orientation program.

Higher education is a place where the values of science and civilization should prevail. University is a home ground for intellectuals to learn, master and implement the values that have contributed to thousands of inventions which have shaped the world today. Anyone who enjoys the luxury of studying at university is expected to bear those moral responsibilities.

University is too respectable a place for the use of violence and displays of arrogance. Students go to university in the hope of a bright future. Let us help them avoid disorientation.

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