Soham Halder. EC 4th year. MMM Hall. Bengali.
May his soul rest in peace....
Two students. Ten days. Wtfffff
And what will we do?
Admin will send a condolence email. Students held a candle march. And then — everyone went back to normal. Back to classes. Back to asking about exam schedules.
That's it. That's our response to two human beings dying.
The administration's contribution: one email.
Not a town hall. Not an emergency counseling session publicized to every single student. Not a single structural question asked out loud. Not even the basic acknowledgment that something is systemically wrong here
.
Just a carefully worded condolence email, sent once, forgotten by morning.
This institute can send 10 emails about fest registrations, hostel dues, and anti-ragging declarations. But two students die in 10 days and the entire institutional response fits in one paragraph with a "we are deeply saddened."
Deeply saddened. And then the timetable continues.
The student response: a candle march. And then nothing.
I'm not dismissing the people who came out. I understand the impulse. But let's be honest about what a candle march without follow-up demands actually is — it's grief performance. It lets everyone feel like they did something without anyone actually doing anything.
The candles went out. The WhatsApp groups moved on. The student reps went quiet.
****These are the same reps and seniors who will personally follow up if you skip illumination duty. Who make sure every fresher shows up for soap box. Who run hall politics like a machine.*****
And then the examination roll call happened.
The professor called the name.
No answer.
And class continued.
I want to ask that professor — and every professor on this campus — directly: Did you not know? Or did you just not care enough to stop?
But two students are dead and there is no meeting called. No open letter. No sit-in. No collective demand. Nothing.
MMM Hall — where this happened — silence.
The broader campus — silence.
Faculty — silence, because students are silent, so why would they stick their necks out?
Admin — silence, because students are silent, so why would they change anything?
We are giving them permission to do nothing. With our silence.
Do you understand what "two in ten days" means?
This is not a coincidence to grieve and move past. This is a pattern screaming at us. This campus has a mental health crisis and the system is structurally designed to ignore it until someone dies, send an email, wait for the candles to burn out, and repeat.
Does the institute have any real mechanism to identify students who are struggling — not after the fact, but before? Does anyone actually know where the counseling center is? Has any professor ever been trained to notice when a student disappears from class for two weeks and maybe, maybe, check in?
Or is the only intervention a condolence email?