These are some of the mails sent by the Dean of Student Affairs (DOSA) of IIT- Kanpur to all students’ list in the past month. These days the “lost and found” mails are qualified enough to be termed as spam. As you can see, not even a single mail was read by the student. Many delete these mails straightaway.
There have been cases when a person found something but didn’t know who the owner was. Later a mail titled “found” was circulated to every soul in the campus and still the owner couldn’t be located. Possible reason? The mail wasn’t read by the very person who lost the thing.
And the students are not to be blamed. If X lost an object or Y found one, this is not something that the whole campus should be informed of. The indifference towards such mails by the campus junta render the mails useless. Added to this, students tend to ignore even other mails by DOSA which may be pertinent to them.
To do away with these exasperating mails, actually help students find their belongings ( and help prompt substance into the mails by DOSA), some motivated students of IIT-K namely – Sohil Bansal, Abhimanyu Jaju and Atulya Shivam Shree have come up with an online- lost and found- portal. The link to the portal is:- http://students.iitk.ac.in/lnf/ .
The website has a lucid interface and aims at providing a handy platform to the people who have either lost or found something. This provides an advantage over the earlier mass-mailing ritual as only the concerned individuals will bother to visit the portal and others would not be troubled. Also, this will reserve webmail for more important information and announcements .Actually, what’s astonishing is why something like this took this long to surface when we all have had “lost and found sections” in our school which made finding lost stuff a hands down experience. But now we at the campus too have a lost and found section. Only, this one has an upper hand, as it is virtual.
So, if you’ve lost or found something, simply post it on the portal. The success of the portal depends on us, the users. Instead of mailing DOSA, asking him to forward your mail and later be read by none, post on the portal so that if someone happens to find your belonging, the person can contact you directly.
Such ingenious ideas can greatly simplify life on campus. The Vox team urges you all to make efforts towards identifying problems in and around the campus and come up with innovative solutions. A simple idea of yours might solve a problem that may be pestering a multitude.
We have had examples when extremely simple ideas of some individuals had effectual results. A striking instance is that of the “Gopi Search”. Another example was the introduction of bag tags in library during the last end semester exams. It was a very simple idea that nearly brought down the bag exchanges to zero and also helped the webmail inbox stay clear of the plethora of extremely annoying “exchanged bag” mails.
We are the stakeholders of the campus. We the partakers in the benefits as well. Just being aware towards your surroundings and conscious of the happenings can make all the difference. After all, only an aware and conscious student community can create a robust campus.
P.S.- Vox sincerely hopes somebody takes up the task of revamping OARS.
Written by Rishabh Anand
