SRCC has to offer around 50 functional societies which cover a variety of fields from finance, marketing, debating, social entrepreneurship, human resources, fine arts and so on and so forth. These are the only spaces for extra-curricular activities in our campus. In college, it is projected that for many of the alumni, long lasting friendships and the best of memories have been established through these societies. However, is the society space accessible to all, and to all equally? Let us cover the functioning of a typical society step by step to evaluate this.
Selection process :
Ever since day 1 of semester 1, we are dumped with information regarding the plethora of societies, even before there is time to sink in the huge transition that we have made from high school to under-graduation. The decisions of the freshers to join societies are mostly influenced by the quality of the orientation, seniors' recommendations, and sometimes sheer self interest. Orientations start as early as the second day of college with no time for the freshers to breathe, or interact enough with the seniors to know more about the reality of the societies. This impacts their decision making process, leading to over - burdening of the students with the societies, which in turn leads to a huge amount of under quality work and learning, which will be discussed later.
The societies generally have a selection process which has around three stages - an application, group discussion and personal interview. Though the application round is a mere formality (in most cases) , the other two rounds are meant to test the students’ interpersonal skills, aptitude, general awareness and industry knowledge. The elite students, who come from premier schools, ace these rounds. However, this puts the students from less privileged background at a huge disadvantage, since these rounds require a mammoth level of self - marketing, confidence and English proficiency. It is important to understand that confidence, the most sacrosanct quality during all these assessments, comes from acceptance from peers and society at large. In our society, however, socioeconomic categories like caste and class influence this factor the most. The society that we live in, makes confidence easier for some to gain while making it inaccessible to others, because some, by virtue of their background, fulfill their archetype of 'favored'. This pattern can be very easily observed in our college societies. Upon opening the Facebook handle of some ten societies, it’s hard not to notice the same batch of students having their names repeated in all the lists. The whole selection process for many societies is not inclusive because the aspects that are assessed during the selection, are varied among the students not due to some innate talent or potential, but because of the differences in the levels of exposure, opportunities and quality of schooling which we all have experienced. Not getting selected into societies they wish to be part of escalates the feeling of dissociation of non elite students. It makes them feel unworthy and can have serious impacts on confidence and future participation in college activities.
A better method for selection can be found in the system of open societies as practiced in many other DU colleges. Open societies allows all interested students to join societies, giving up all these unnecessary and flawed selected process. Every student should be given the opportunity to learn and contribute up to their ability, and should be judged based on their work rather than their ability for self marketing or corporate contacts. At least this policy can be adopted for a probationary period of 3 months and permanent members can be selected after this period based on their performance.
Even after crossing the hurdle of selection, it is not easy for non elite students to survive in some societies due to the specific culture and norms they follow. Ones who don’t align with these elite atmosphere, face an immense toll mentally trying to fit in with the standards and expectations. There is a process of alienation carried out in these societies towards those who are non-elite, or who do not conform to the lifestyle choices of the elites of the society. This 'othering' profoundly impacts the confidence of those non-elites, which causes their performance and work to suffer. Many consequently drop out of the societies.
Wing appropriation and post allocation:
Once inducted into the society, we are all segregated under various wings based on the pre-acquired skills and interview performances. All wings of a society are not treated equally. There is an unscripted hierarchy within different wings of the society.Within the structure of the society, most of the work done by organizing, marketing and technical wings is not given due importance and is looked down upon. Those in the research, editorial and sponsorship wings are the ones mainly involved in ideation and core functioning - they manage to get the maximum learning which was promised to the whole of society. This could be eliminated by compulsory rotation of students (not just in theory) and evaluation of work based on performance and not just on prior experience. Most of the elite students get to be a part of the ideation and sponsorship wings, again due to their earlier experiences and personal corporate contacts, stemming from a privileged background. Allocation of wings are subject to regional bias as well. Case in point: mostly associating South Indians to the organizing wing. Both registered and unregistered societies tend to stereotype and assume that South Indians would do most of the field operations and organizing work. Even though the logistical part of the fests and societies is of utmost importance, it is mostly scorned at and the pattern has not changed over the years. It is also true that non elite south Indian students face this discrimination more than the elites. This again becomes a matter of difference when during the cabinet post appointments the elite students are found in a more favorable position.
Bias against south Indians is retaliated by South Indian dominated societies, where South Indians are given priority membership and cabinet posts. In both cases, working together without constraints of regionalism is not achieved.
In almost all societies, both the induction of freshers and allocation of cabinet posts are to an extent influenced by the seniors, who favor juniors from their same region or school (in most cases). More specifically in the case of registered societies, most of the posts are filled up based on their contributions in elections. Since most of the South Indians are very active with the Student’s Union and vocal about their electoral preferences, they secure posts with the help of their seniors and this distorted process of post allocation is detrimental to the ones who choose to be dissociated in the elections.
Moreover, most of the communication within the society tends to happen in Hindi, despite the fact that the college hosts pan - Indian and international students. Ignorance of language is also a cause of hesitation to induct freshers (be it Hindi or English) and puts a huge chunk of South Indian, North - Eastern and International students at a disadvantage.
Image source- India Today
Inter-societal hierarchy:
In inter - societal levels, there are hierarchies created which segregate elites from non - elites. Case in point: Debating Society vs Youth Parliament. Enactus vs Connecting Dreams Foundation. Youth Conference vs CLIF. Though these societies function along the same lines, the latter is always considered as less than the former, according to the conventional narrative in college. This is because of the fact that these latter societies have opened up spaces for the non - elites. Here, we are again unconsciously, systematically reinstating the status of privilege.
Discrimination and hierarchy at all levels:
From the discussion above we can conclude that our societies are built on different levels of hierarchy within and beyond its structure. We create unjustified rankings within the social fabric of the college right from the time some students enter societies and others are unable to enter. We tend to label the latter for not being ‘as smart as’, or ‘well read enough’ to be a part of the societies, oblivious to other real reasons attributing to this. Even once selected into the societies, we force the students to get accustomed to, and imbibe the overarching and arbitrarily set culture of that society, which if not adhered to again leads to alienation and a bad case of peer pressure. Even if the non - elites surpass the initial selection hurdles, the hierarchical structure within the societies in the form of different wings re - instills discrimination structurally. So if a non-elite tries to be part of any top society of our college (which in most cases is an elite dominated one), he/she will first encounter the difficulty of actually getting into any society at all, then the difficulty of that society being the top, elite-captured society (since the societies that accept non-elites are clearly demarcated), then the difficulty of being part of a wing which is respected, and finally also the difficulty of sustaining himself/herself within the crushing, elite atmosphere of the society.Since everyone in our college worships societies, the ones who are unable to make it there, or after making it have to drop out because of the above mentioned factors, feel disengaged from the college itself. This puts a huge strain on their mental health as well.
Can we make the societies more accountable?
All societies are generally fest oriented and the general workings of society is neglected. The registered societies carry the legacy of hosting grand fests over the years and hence most of their time and resources are directed towards nailing the big three day fest. The amount of resources (manpower, finances, time and materials) that are employed in pulling off one fest - right from marketing, staging and logistics, flex and banners, energy utilization, creatives, etc are humongous! Imagine that multiplied with 50 and the amount of waste we generate which very well could have been avoided had they all been umbrellaed under one glorious cultural/business fest. A detailed post about inefficiencies in our society fests will be covered in the coming posts.
There ought to be a more transparent and responsible manner in which both freshers and seniors are inducted into the cabinet and the general society. Favoritism and regionalism, as mentioned above, shouldn't dictate the selection procedure. Do the societies mention the basis and criteria of selection? Are they inclusive of the non - elite students? Do they deliver the promises to the inducted juniors? Such questions should be scrutinized on a regular basis.
The poor performance of the societies sometimes also is attributed to the fact that most cabinets do not have non - exclusivity clauses which makes one person a post - holder in sometimes as high as 4 societies. This hampers both the quality of performance and leaves the juniors distressed. A cap on the number of societies to hold office and membership could be an effective tool to regulate the quality. Freshers often crumble and hesitate to manage between the multiple societies (sometimes, the count goes as high as 10) and we’ve seen them struggle to keep up with their commitments and quality of work. It is instead encouraged to let them join just a couple of societies to help them realize their area of liking and work proactively towards just that society to get a promised experience.
Every society has a Teacher - In - Charge who is redundant in his/her contributions towards the society. Apart from getting permissions, attendance benefits and dates, their role becomes dormant. The college could mandate all the TICs to prepare a comprehensive report of the society which evaluates their performance right from orientation till cabinet formation to keep a track on quality control.
Societies were initiated to make them as spaces of voluntary, democratic learning and as we embark on yet another academic year, can we step back and re - evaluate how we are functioning?