You Can't Make Us Smell Good, Goddamit!

by Mystique

In what is being touted as yet another infringement of an engineer’s already infringed life at TU, the administration has come up with a brilliant yet devilish scheme in order to increase the overall hygiene of the campus.

The ‘Shower Police’ has just been commissioned at an emergency meeting of the Thapar University governing council (read the fourth Reich), a body formulated for the sole purpose of ensuring that every single student of this notoriously unclean University take a bath ‘atleast once a week.’ The press release after the meeting of the Reich…erm, the governing council drew a very mixed response from the three journalists present at the very high profile press conference. 

Typical Thapar Student

While this reporter, in all journalistic sensibility, of course, remained neutral at the announcement, the LitSoc representative positively broke down in tears. She, by the looks of it, had maintained a strict regime of bi-annual sponge baths for quite some time, and upon hearing the announcement, as the prospect of a healthy and quite necessary cleansing overtook her, she started tearing up and screaming obscenities at the Reich representative.

Amidst shouts of ‘you-can’t-make-us-smell-good! Goddamnit-engineers-are-not-meant-to-smell-good!’ she was escorted out of the hall by a couple of gasmask-wearing Gestapo agents…erm, I mean University guards.

The Reich representative…I mean, governing council representative proceeded to outline the details and particulars of the ‘No engineer left filthy!’ campaign, and the powers given to the Shower Police.

1. The ‘shower security’ or the SS for short (coincidence?) has, as it’s primary objective the responsibility to make sure every single student at the University takes at least one bath a week, failing which the SS reserves the right to forcibly bathe the offender, or if that proves too difficult, recommend the offender to be failed in all subjects that semester.
2. A new subject, ‘Hygiene’, with 4.5 credits, is being formed and all students, irrespective of branch, year and/or gender will be graded on it, on a per week basis. At the end of the semester, the final grade will be part of the student’s SGPA. The grades are as follows-
   A – grade points 10 – ‘Squeaky Clean’
   B – grade points 8 – ‘Marginally bad breath/body odour’
   C – grade points 6 – ‘More soap required’
   D – grade points 4 – ‘Six week old cheese’
   E – grade points 2 – ‘Bio-Hazard!’
   F – grade points 0 – ‘Biological/Chemical Weapon of Mass Destruction’
   On recent survey of both the girls and boys hostels, the grade point average (GPA) in all the boys hostels combined is a very alarming 5.24, and in the girls hostels combined, a marginally better 5.66. Current year end targets are at least 7.5 as a whole.

   

   FNT's suggestion for increasing the...enthusiasm of the
   students towards taking showers! *wink 

3. Mass distribution of free industrial strength soap is being put through final logistical testing, and will be underway in less than a week.
4. Instructional videos on the proper brushing of teeth, and the recommended use of bathing soap are to be forcibly downloaded onto every single laptop computer on campus.
   (At this point, one journalist ventured to ask whether this would affect the already fragile bandwidth situation on campus. The Reich representative responded with a very curt, ‘Well, they can download one less porn video that night.’)
5. The newly formed position of ‘Dean of Nahaying’ (DON! DON! DON! for short… ‘Dean of Bathing’ for all you firangs) is being filled by one Dr. Sabunmalyam Showerjee.

A further one hundred and twenty two points were then described to the gathering, and although they are too lengthy to be printed here in their entirety, those looking for further details can do so on every notice-board in existence in the University. Apparently, this is a very important matter for the Reich.

We caught up with the DON! DON! DON! Dr.Showerjee to ask him about his plans on how to implement the ‘No Engineer Left Filthy!’ campaign. He was rather candid about the whole situation, and had this to say, ‘Having been an engineering student myself, I can say with a lot of empathy that I know what these young men and women are going through. The very thought of taking a bath, in the morning, standing underneath that cleansing shower of water, going through the very mundane process of repeatedly lathering yourself with that disgustingly fresh-smelling bar of soap, and the repulsive feeling of being clean for a change, afterwards, I mean it’s enough to make one’s skin crawl. But what I am here to make these young people understand is, that the world puts rather a lot of importance on things such as smelling-good, fresh breath, non-sticky fingers, the real colour of your skin etc. etc… I realize that these things are very difficult for an engineering student to grasp, but hygiene is freakishly important in the outside world, it’s strange, but true!’

We also caught up with a few of the students around campus to take in their views on these developments.

The famous shower scene from Alfred Hitchcock's 'Psycho'...
Also why Thapar students SAY they don't shower

A very morose looking third year mechanical student, wearing what looked like a brown hoodie, had this to say, ‘I knew this would happen…I knew! It’s like we’re living in China, man! I mean, why why why do I have to take a shower, man? It’s horrifying!’
A few tears leaked out of the student’s eyes at this point, leaving two trails of lighter skin on his face. We asked him about the last time he took a shower. Positively trembling, he replied, ‘Well, when I went home last summer, my mom made me took one. Ha! But I fooled her! I went into the washroom, turned on the shower and just put a few drops of water on my face and arms, and made it look like I had done it proper. It was a close call, but I guess the last real time I took a shower was the summer of 2009, before I first came to Thapar. I still have nightmares about it sometimes.’

Whether this is a good move on the part of the authorities, well we’ll let you, the readers decide, but one thing is for sure, very soon there may come a time when the only time you’ll crinkle your nose in college is when you walk past the chemistry department, because no one, no one can make those idiots smell better.

The Missing Hostel - Hostel F

by Cypher

Have you been wondering why there were hardly any new posts from us this last week? Well, we were on our mission to unravel what could be perhaps the mystery of the century! Almost every one of us would have noticed (DUH if you haven’t) that Thapar University has hostels named A,B,C,D,E,G,H,I,J. What happened to F? Why wasn’t a hostel F made? Well, if you think so you ARE WRONG, my friend. A hostel named F was indeed made! Hold your hearts and read on...

It all started in the 1960s soon after the ‘Thapar institute of engineering and technology’ came into existence. Initially 5 hostels, named A-E were used. Now we are all familiar with the Thapar grading system, with grades ranging from A-F, F being the worst. Well it wasn’t the case in the beginning. When it started, E was the worst you could get. However, with the passage of time, the authorities felt that the students who consistently underperformed needed to be punished in some way to motivate them to improve. It was then that the dreaded “F” was introduced. F stood for DETENTION (wow! We didn’t know it was called ‘F’etention). A new building (now known as the old girls hostel) was made. It was the original HOSTEL-F. It wasn’t a hostel off course. It was more of a detention centre. The students who scored below the cut-off marks in a particular subject were said to be given ‘F’ and they had to spend 45 days in the detention centre. It was from here that the term ‘I got an F’ came into usage.

You must be wondering what went on inside this ‘hostel’. Well it was nothing you could have imagined! The defaulters were locked inside the building for 45 days. They were tied down to a central pole in their room for the first 15 days with absolutely no human contact. There were only books in each room. Food was served in the room itself. The students who showed improvement were allowed to stay as such. Those who didn’t, however, were taken to the next stage. The students were made to eat food from Hostel B’s mess FOUR TIMES a day!! It was mandatory to finish the food every time. However this wasn’t half as bad as the third stage!! The students were made to attend lectures (of the subject they got detained in) from 8 to 9 everyday (even on SATURDAYS AND SUNDAYS)! And it was mandatory for them to sit on the first bench! 45 days of this grueling treatment later, the students were sent back to their hostels.

This continued for many years. It was finally in March 1980 when the PETA was formed. (??) PETA activists opposed this as “treatment like this is a right of the animals and the animals only! We can’t allow humans to take what’s rightfully theirs from the animals”. It was then that the authorities realized that just RE-teaching the subject and making the students rewrite the exams was way more traumatizing than this. Hence, the current system of ‘summer semester’ was incorporated. Since the hostel was never demolished, the further hostels were named as G, H, I and J. although the building itself has been revamped but many people still claim to have heard the screams of those traumatized souls while passing the building.

Although the management claims that Hostel F was shut down, yet we still hear stories about an underground facility, still running somewhere near the current hostel H. It isn’t a mere co-incidence that the TANKI has become so popular. Stories say that the entrance to the underground building goes from the Tanki’s top itself (does that explain SOMETHING?)! We have been trying to get to the bottom of this (pun) and that’s what kept us busy. Stay tuned for more. We’ll be back as soon as we get something substantial.