Senate Samachar brings out its first post to highlight the agendas discussed in the 6th special meeting and the 9th meeting of the students’ senate.
Clarifications: The senate has not rejected Vipul Garg’s argument but has asked him, as Convener of the Gymkhana Review Committee, to come up with a suitable alternate name for the position of heads in cells to address his supposed concern.Though the report has been accepted by the senate as reported by us. The proposal to increase the cap on participation was presented by the festival coordinators of Techkriti ’14 and not Techkriti ‘16. This proposal has been accepted by the senate with some modifications. Melange is organized by the President, the executive for General Affairs Council and not the Presidential Council. The amount for students’ research convention may be raised from Student’s Activity Fund and from the institute.
Reaching the world via Outreach cell
A proposal was raised by Ashutosh Ranka, President, Students’ Gymkhana to create a student body named ‘Outreach Cell’.The vision behind this program is to build a positive and attractive image of the institute in the eyes of the alumni, the corporate world, potential faculty, aspirants and the society.This would help to improve the student-alumni relations and spread awareness about institute’s academic and nonacademic activities.
Some plans for this proposal include organizing Open House for UG students just after JEE results. The Outreach Cell will also publish short videos, blog posts and newspaper articles to disseminate information about the institute. Further, they intend to create a common website for alumni, students, potential faculty and visitors. The website will provide comprehensive information about the activities of the institute and its alumni. It will integrate the future-students website and the Quora blog.
The initiative will be carried out in coordination with the Information cell, Media and Publicity Centre, Alumni Relations office and the DoRA office. This would help in pushing the content generated continuously through offline media (newspapers, tech magazines,etc.) collectively at an institute level.
The proposed internal structure of the cell consists of three wings, namely, creatives, content and public relations. Senator Vipul Garg argued that the cells should only have executives and not heads in its initial year as they won’t have much work. It would be unfair to those who hold similar position but are doing more work. The senate rejected Vipul Garg’s argument and passed the report.
“Censure” turmoil hits Parliamentarian
In the 6th Special Meeting of the Student’s Senate, a censure motion was proposed on the floor of senate against the parliamentarian. A Censure motion is a formal expression of severe disapproval, passed against an authority, for one’s failure to perform his/her duties. The motion was proposed against the Parliamentarian, Ayushya Agarwal, for misinterpreting the constitution of student’s gymkhana in a special session which was organized with the incoming senate for the selection of Chairperson, Student’s Senate 2017-18. During the special session, an argument was raised regarding the legitimacy of the nomination of Shivam Mishra who was a candidate for the post of Chairperson. Allegations were made that Shivam Mishra, who was a senior election officer for the general elections 2017, could have ‘influenced the elections’, and thereby could have also ‘influenced the senators’. When the parliamentarian was asked for his interpretation, he declared Shivam Mishra ineligible for the post of Chairperson and cited ‘conflict of interests’ as the reason behind his decision. The case was taken up in the Student Senate’s 6th special meeting where senator Harsh Narang proposed for a censure motion against the parliamentarian. The proposal was not passed by the senate, as out of overall 19 votes, 7 votes were in favour of passing of the motion compared to 12 votes against the motion.
MELANGE SCRAPPED OFF THIS YEAR’S GENERAL CHAMPIONSHIP
Ashutosh Ranka, President Students’ Gymkhana, raised a proposal in the 9th meeting of the student senate to scrape melange this year and extrapolate the GC points. Melange is the annual inter-pool competition organized by the presidential council. Kunal Kapila argued that it should have been considered while formulating the gymkhana calendar. Ranka replied by stating the unexpected change in the academic calendar which caused a one-week delay in the ongoing semester. The senate agreed to scrape melange due to a jam-packed schedule.
Deliberations to increase the cap on participation of Techkriti’17
A proposal was presented by Mohit Pandey, festival coordinator, Techkriti ’17 to increase the cap of participants in Techkriti this year to 2100. Currently, the cap is 1800 for full accommodation and 500 for open fest. Mohit Pandey supported his proposal by highlighting the recent infrastructural development. 300 more individuals can be accommodated in the available space, the breakup being 60 in GH 2 and 120 each in hall 12 and 13. He mentioned the increased participation in Techkriti, with 16 cities being visited in Technocruise as compared to 8 last year and 21 cities being visited in TOSC as compared to 11 last year. The festival coordinators of Techkriti ’16 had proposed an increase to 1800. The senate wanted to discuss it further and has not passed the proposal yet.
The mystery of Spectrum 16’: Who is the winner?
Spectrum, the annual inter-pool competition was organized by the Films and Media Council, Students’ Gymkhana last semester.The final standings of the competition conducted 4 months ago are yet to be announced. This question was raised in the 6th special meeting of the students’ senate.
Mayank Jain, General Secretary of Films and Media Council answered the senate that he intends to disclose the results of Spectrum along with Galaxy. He took this special measure to ensure every pool participates with complete enthusiasm in the remaining GC events. He feared prior announcement of results would dishearten the pools and they won’t put their cent percent efforts.
So the suspense of Spectrum ‘16 results will unravel this weekend along with the galaxy results.
IITK to organize Students’ Research Convention: Gymkhana may fund Rs 8 lac
The Academics & Research Cell(ARC) presented a proposal to inaugurate ‘IITK Student’s Research Convention’, a two-day event to promote and celebrate the culture of cutting-edge research taking place in the country today. It will be conducted on the 8th and 9th of April 2017. It aims to provide a platform for students to showcase their research work, to promote a research-oriented profession and provide opportunities to the students to interact with leading researchers in various fields.
The ARC shall invite students and professors from prestigious institutes across the country such as IITs, IISERs, IISc, NITs and some other local institutes. The convention shall host talks by research scholars of IIT Kanpur. There shall be oral and poster presentations. Local industrialists, startups, SnT clubs and institute’s research labs shall be invited to set-up exhibitions.Workshops on soft skill development and other vital skills like machine learning, finite analysis, advanced linear algebra shall be conducted.
The ARC also plans to conduct applied research reviews to discuss on a wide range of applied research fields such like augmented reality, artificial intelligence and smart materials.
Director Indranil Manna is quite supportive for this initiative. Vedant Goenka, chairperson students’ senate announced that he hopes senate thinks it is for a good cause and will allow the ARC to continue. The 8 lac rupees may be raised from the gymkhana fund. The proposal was passed by the students’ senate.
Reorganizing Campus Entrepreneurship
The E-cell, proposed ‘The Student Entrepreneurship Policy’, a set of guidelines and policies that may promote entrepreneurship on campus. This proposal was taken up by the senate in its 9th meeting conducted on 31st January. The policy was presented as an agenda item in a senate meeting last year but was then kept on hold. This time it was passed by the student senate after some edits and now waits to be discussed in the academic senate.
The senate had a lot of discussion on a point, according to which the institute is supposed to have about 2 percent equity in the company, in return of facilities like department specific labs, an office, and legal advice to company owners whenever required. The senate was divided on its views on the issue. Many accused it of being mere exploitation of the student entrepreneur as he/she may not wish to use the institute provided services and hence is not bound to pay, while others stood by the view that the owner, in any case, would be using such services while he is on campus.In addition to that, the proposal states that a student has to operate with the campus incubation centre unless a justification is provided to the authorities for not doing so. Once associated with the institute, the institute would exercise its discretion in several areas. Liability free 2 percent equity is supposed to be arranged till the founding student is living on the campus and using the institute provided services. Several guidelines have been presented concerning the share of faculty mentor and funding for the company, which could be provided by the institute as a loan or as a part of the equity in the company if the company desires so.
written by Harshit Bhalla, Pratyush Rai, Anmol Chaman, Rahul Agrawal, Shashank Gupta and Sirsendu Sarkar
