Everyone seems to have an opinion on life on the Jawaharlal Nehru University campus after Wednesday’s incident in which a 22-year-old student was attacked by her male classmate, who claimed to be in love with her and who then killed himself.

The incident is being seen as a symbol of failure of the intellectual Left environment and the liberal atmosphere of the campus. “We told you so,” everyone seems to be saying.

But let's not stretch the point where it doesn't need to go. That the campus has been a model of dissent, free speech and freedom for both men and women for quite some time now is beyond argument. That the surest method to solve an argument there was, and still remains, a healthy debate is also without argument.

However, just as everything else, JNU cannot remain unaffected from what is happening in the world today. The changing times demand that the campus, where men and women mingle freely and life begins only after 5 pm, initiates a revised discussion on gender. The gender discourse in JNU was, and remains, all about freedom and activities of women. As Vibha Iyer, a PhD student in economics at the varsity, said, it is high time this dialogue involves men as they come to terms with a society where women enjoy equal status, or at least aspire to do so. “The posters all over the campus are all about women demanding their freedom. Where are the men?” Iyer asked.

Seriously, where are the men? Posters for GSCASH, the gender sensitisation cell of the university, proudly hail the powers of the ‘new woman’. However, do they dig deep to realise that now that women have some bargaining powers of their own, have men stopped considering them as private property?

Men and women in JNU come from very different, places, culture, background, and many from very conservative regions of India. But the gender ethos on campus seems to deal with only urban, mobile and upper class youth. The ideas of morality seem to only encourage a free-for-all society without taking into cognizance each person's individual socialisation. The pressure to adhere to such morality affects those who have traditionally not conformed to such a culture.

In such a situation, both men and women suffer. Cultural changes have been called cultural shocks for a reason. Not being able to be 'cool with everything' in JNU is as traumatic as not being able to be rich and hip in Delhi University. While superficially people do become ‘cool’, incidents such as the violent attack-suicide (though truth be told, violence of this nature is perhaps a first in recent memory) show that the malaise lies deeper within.

The absence of political consciousness, which has been washed away gradually since the Lyngdoh committee banned students union elections, has also led to the youth wandering away in the vast expanse of the campus without any compass. As Saradindu Bhaduri, secretary of JNU teachers’ association, said, the July 31 incident is “fallout of the Lyngdoh Commission that destroyed JNU's vibrant political space that led to intense communication between students and students with teachers on various issues, problems. What we are now seeing is the result of its breakdown” (read the Hindustan Times report here).

Students in JNU are now scared that the incident will take away their freedom on campus, as stricter surveillance measures might by employed. Surveillance, however, is not the key. What the campus needs is to get together and, however derided the method may be, discuss. Discuss that the idea of freedom cannot be one for everyone but has to be developed at the level of every student.

Professors can come forward and hold meetings with new students to usher them into their new life. Without being condescending or paternalistic, they can explain what life on campus can mean to people. Assuming everyone, whoever enters JNU, is an adult old enough to make her/his own decision has already cost the campus dearly.

Let's do what JNU does best. Let's talk.

(Ed: A former JNU student, Shivangi takes justifiable pride in and lives, breathes and thrives on the JNU culture – at work, or in verbal duels with colleagues when both she and the said colleagues are supposed to be working!)