The Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology will reopen today ending a 44-day holiday of summer, Ramadan and Eid-ul-Fitr.
The holiday, from July 11 to August 24, was announced amid a protest by its teachers’ association demanding the resignation of its vice-chancellor SM Nazrul Islam and the pro vice-chancellor Habibur Rahman.
The leaders of the teachers’ association, facing a High Court order against holding demonstrations on the campus, said on Friday that they did not have any confidence in the present university administration but would abide by the law.
Some teachers, preferring anonymity, said the members of the teachers’ association would join their work but would not conduct any classes or carry out other academic activities until the VC and his deputy were removed.
The general students do not either think that there will be any classes on the first day of the reopening.
‘Most of my classmates and friends said they were not coming because they thought there’d be no classes today,’ said Ujjawal Haldar, a final year student of water resources engineering department.
‘Because of the teachers’ face-off we are suffering,’ he said.
Vice-chancellor SM Nazrul Islam brushed aside any uncertainty over the classes not resuming today.
‘I have talked to the teachers and they said they would certainly conduct the classes and start other activities too,’ he said.
On the admission process for the academic session 2012-13, the VC said the authorities would call an academic council meeting this week to plan the process.
The High Court on August 14 directed the authorities to start the admission process under the session as early as possible.
The HC, earlier on July 31, imposed an injunction that prohibited the teachers, students and other employees, who went on staging an indefinite sit-in from July 11, from holding demonstrations on the campus.
Protesting the closure of the university, all the five deans and the 17 department heads and directors of three institutes under the university, resigned on July 11.
They also submitted a memorandum to the president, Mohammad Zillur Rahman, also the chancellor of the university.
Several initiatives by the education ministry and BUET Syndicate failed to resolve the stand-off as the teachers refused to give up their demand for the removal of the VC and the pro vice-chancellor.
The teachers’ movement demanding the removal of the two officials began April this year to be later joined by the students and other staff of the university.
-With New Age input
