Rationality on ransom and morality for sale

Epistemic rationality and ethics/morality are tightly linked, implying that the lack of former might impact the latter.  Being in academia, we often take the practice of rationality, particularly the epistemic one,  in granted. Ironically, lack of rational and moral behaviour  in academia is as much missing as anywhere else. I earlier attributed this irony to the competition for resources and the self interest of people excessively passionate for their goals, often materialistic ones. 

In one of the recent incidents at institute, nuisance by the present generation of students (so-called GenZ) as well a few faculty members breached most checks of rationality and morality I ever encountered. Students blocked a key road connecting the main gate to the faculty housing. Reason? They wanted to resolve their issues on their terms. This includes an utterly ridiculous conditions like the deans should resolve their issues by meeting them outside in the area where they were protesting, not in a meeting room. If not the deans must resign.  Did they elect the administrators by their votes? Can they summon the deans? When deans denied the meeting at the protest site, the students strategically planned and choked a junction  that connected 3 independent roads converging to faculty housing. Several faculty members suffered. Some had to go pick their kids from various schools/coaching centres.  Some had toddlers sleeping inside their vehicle and had to carry them walking in the rain. Some had flight to catch, others had appointment with the physician. 

A few faculty members did not bow down to this unlawful blockade and in the process of slowly driving through this blockage their vehicle touched past some students, which was later mal-projected as 'faculty cars ramming into students', shamelessly name-dropped, and demanded an apology from faculty.  Chutzpah ! What were they doing in the middle of the road at first place? Someone's fundamental right to move freely is not at anyone's discretion. 

A few faculty members wrote to them and held them accountable for the unlawful acts, which surely qualified as violations of a dozen of IPC sections. The students' representative conveyed an apology for 'any inconvenience caused' as if it was an inadvertent artefact. They appeared convinced that act was not a harassment and conveniently cleared themselves of any wrong doing.  They claimed the act as their last resort, despite the fact that their 1st protest started a few hours before the said unlawful act and they had ample of time to plan their next course of action lawfully. 

As if this was not enough, the protesting students sieged on the faculty residence in the mid of the night with their loud slogans and chants. My child woke up scared. In curiosity, she peeked outside the window and got  frightened by the view to an extent that she could not sleep whole night. Since fighting with the admin became too hard for the protesters, it appeared that they then shifted the strategy to harass any one in arms' reach.  One needs to be  amnesiac or schizophrenic to mistake faculty, another victim navigating the same stubborn administrative maze that students claimed to struggle with, for perpetrators and architects of  their  grievances. Targeting the families of faculty does not make them revolutionaries, but a problem of a different kind. Attacking another victim to spite an arrogant administration does not qualify as activism, but as failure of logic and basic empathy.  Had they shown the same enthusiasm to attend their classes, they could have made a better choice. 

A few faculty member claimed the 'kindness' of students since their relatives, who were wheelchair bound, were allowed to pass the blockade. This felt like a classical case of Stockholm Syndrome. Does one has to be medically unwell not to be harassed unlawfully? Moreover, these were merely momentary exceptions, which they thought could trivialise the gravity of the situation.  Ironically, another faculty member called to take pride of students because some of the issues raised by them related to campus greenery and hygiene. These issues  were anything but the  discovery or the initiative of students, and had been recurrently raised my many in the recent past. A call to take pride could perhaps wait for an appropriate occasion.

Interestingly, some students and faculty approached media to broadcast their versions. None of the media houses verified and cover the complete truth. If lapdog media is bad,  the watchdog media is not doing good either. The former does not need and the latter is too lazy to do ground reporting. 

On APC (अहं प्रभु छविः)

 

As an independent computational biologist, I generally do not bother the administrators for funds every other morning. Consequently, I cherish the privilege of escaping fakery of smile, flattery of complements and flaunting of fleeting loyalty. Nevertheless, they always succeed to find one occasion when they feel that  I am on their mercy. On the great occasion of arranging Article Processing Charges, popularly known as APC.  It is an "अहं प्रभु छविः" (I am God's reflection) moment for the administrators. Most of the extra-mural funding agencies do not have a clear provision of accommodating APC. This grey area serve as administrative tool to harass the ones they don't like.  They sit on the papers to make sure the invoice expires a couple of times. The same administrators promptly process twice costlier APCs of their own or dear ones' articles.  Ironically, they go after the PIs to finish the leftover funds towards the end of the financial year.  A serious case of intentional amnesia !  

Some of my colleagues suggested that I do not sufficiently visit the administrators to earn their goodwill.  They label it as ego.  It took me sometime to realize that by 'ego' they referred 'me'. Chutzpah ! I thought they implied satisfying the egos of administrators who expect me to flatter them. Why do I roam around in the offices, which are no less than maze puzzles? What explains those unanswered emails for appointments then?  A relatable question I asked in the midsem exam of a statistics course: 

Q1. Institute's administration responds to emails at a lightning speed of  0.1 per day. Consider this as constant and answer the following:

a. Your colleague Mr. Chatur, a seasoned observer of institutional functioning, argues, “The average wait is 10 days. We have already waited 20 days. The reply is overdue!”  Dissect Mr. Chatur’s reasoning statistically?

b. Mr. Chatur further decides that if no reply arrives within 30 days, he will write a public email exposing the administration. From a probabilistic standpoint, how rational is this step?

(Image ref: https://macrolingo.com/justification-for-article-processing-charges-apcs/ )