Actually, I didn't want to write about this road accident in the first place, because whenever any accidents happened, we started to cry out for road safety but after a day or two, when the hype went down, everything went the same as before. But this time, the tragedy was beyond our imagination. I can't shake the incident out of my head, none of us can. And the sad thing is, this is happening inside the most prestigious institution in our country.
Yesterday, near Shahbagh, a private car hit a motorbike where both of the passengers fell into the road, and unfortunately, one of them got pinned under the car and dragged for almost one kilometer from charukola to nilkhet. During this whole time, she was alive till the hospital admission. This one kilometer in the campus was spotted with her blood and internal organs. When the public was able to catch the driver, it revealed he was a former teacher of the International Relations department and sacked four years back for his prolonged absence. That woman has one school-going boy who also lost his father two years ago.
Now just step aside and think for a moment. How come this kind of incident can happen in a public university in the first place? I don't want to start with how this was done by a former teacher, or how that poor school kid will grow up without his parents. But I'll ask about the safety and authority in a public university. A university area should be a peaceful, secure place where students can move around unhesitatingly. But most of the students in DU are having trouble crossing the road, giving exams in loud traffic noise, getting attacked by addicted homeless people, and avoiding pavement for those narcotics. Students have been screaming for safety inside the campus for years, none of the authorities paying any heed.
Source
In a public university, students hold most of the power. If a hundred students come together and take processions, authorities have to listen. We have seen this in "Quota Andolon" too. But how many of us even care! We are ruining university security in our own hands. I've been to different state universities, for example in India's Punjab or Yunnan's national university, campus security is the main concern of their authority. Students don't even have to think about the safety issues, all stoppages are well guarded, and secure but here, you can't even differentiate the craziness of public streets from the inside roads of Dhaka University.
Now placing a limit on car speed, keeping minimum restrictions on outsiders and their vehicles, clearing out addicted and mentally imbalanced homeless from the campus are the very fundamental rules to keep a healthy university environment. And this is not any hard work to do for the university authority. But nothing will happen.
But if I rest all these, the inhumanity is giving an ache to all of us. It is hard to get adjusted to this kind of incident. I think it could be lessened if we taught moral compassion, etiquette, manners and life lessons besides getting good grades, from our primary education. At the age of ten, children are learning how to get the question paper before an exam, where they are meant to learn about integrity. Here, we are struggling to adjust with the grown-up people but when this gen z is going to rule the future we are going to see a lot of shit like this because we don't teach how to rise to take all together, we teach how to rise letting everyone behind. I'm not a pessimist but this kind of tragedy can't give us enough rays of positive hope. So in my opinion, implementing safety inside DU is still a far cry.