Editorial

Moral policing on campus

Creating gender stereotypes on campuses will only contribute to our already prevalent culture of intolerance

Editorial May 24, 2018

Universities act as platforms for character-building and stimulating critical thinking abilities among students. They prepare students for a world beyond its campus. But some of our universities are doing anything but that. The recently-circulated notification in Bahria University is one such example.

The notification instructs all its male and female students to maintain a distance of six inches while together and also forbids them from touching each other, under its ‘Dress Code Alliance’. The university issued this notification to students on all three of its campuses — in Karachi, Lahore and Islamabad.

The need for a university to impose rules that only reinforces the culture of moral policing is quite saddening. Moral policing only feeds to our already conservative patriarchal society, acting as a hurdle to a progressive academic culture.

Justifying the notification, Bahria University spokesperson considered the six-inch distance to be a generic term and considered it to be personal space. But personal space is a subjective term that is only defined by the individual itself. And the solution to someone’s personal space being breached is setting up anti-harassment committees that have already been ordered by the Higher Education Commission to all universities.

In the wake of this, the Federation of All Pakistan Universities Academic Staff Association (FAPUASA) demanding of Bahria University to withdraw the notification is a welcome move. In fact, its president has demanded that all such notifications in other universities should also be withdrawn. Last year, the Bacha Khan University in Charsadda had imposed a gender-segregation policy to supposedly insulate students from ‘immoral’ behaviour.

Creating gender stereotypes on campuses will only contribute to our already prevalent culture of intolerance, and should be done away with immediately.

Published in The Express Tribune, May 24^th, 2018.

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