Teachers of Rajshahi University on Tuesday staged a sit-in at ‘Shaheed Buddhijibi Chattar’ on the campus  protesting ‘ police action on Shahjalal University of Science and Technology (SUST) students and expressing solidarity with the ongoing students’ movement. The teachers urged the government to accept the demands of the SUST students. Read:Day 7 of hunger strike: Medical support for protesting SUST students withdrawn Addressing the protest programme, Abdullah Al Mamun, Associate Professor of Mass Communication and Journalism department said, “Police attack on students is noting new. The students of this university were also attacked on the previous days. The peaceful movement in 2014 was attacked. In 2003, Rokeya Hall students were attacked during peaceful protest. The attack incidents are still happening. Why did it happen at SUST? Just because they spoke against dictetorship!” Kazi Mamun Haider, assistant professor in the same department, said, I have seen the students’ movement for the last 10-20 years. In SUST, they wanted to compromise with the administration. The students have been on hunger strike for more than 140 hours but the government is not paying attention to them. We have started the movement supporting the SUST students and our program will continue. Professor Saleh Hasan Naqib of Physics department, Professor Sauvik Reza of Bangla department and Professor Syed. Ali Reza of Management Studies department were present at the demonstration. Read:SUST protest: Proctor-led team fails to reach food, medicines to embattled VC Abdul Majid Ontor, convener of RUCSU Andalan Manch, Shakila Khatun, president of Bangladesh Chhatra Union of RU unit, Mohabbat Hossain Milon, general secretary of Bangladesh Chhatra Federation of RU and leaders and activists of other left-leaning student organizations and students of different departments took part in the sit-in. Earlier, Dr. Farid Khan, a Professor of Economics department, staged a ‘silent protest’ on Sunday from 11.00 am to 01.00 pm in front of the administrative building of the university demanding the resignation of SUST Vice-Chancellor Farid Uddin.

All classroom activities of the educational institutions of Bangladesh remain suspended for nearly one and a half years following the COVID-19 outbreak. Last week, Unicef confirmed it to be the second-longest pandemic-related school closure in the world.  One effect of this naturally is a growing distance between students and studying. The institutions have been closed for in-person study since March 18, 2020. The closure has been extended numerous times, and the latest extension announced on Thursday by the Education Ministry takes it till September 11 - meaning there is no possibility of the classes resuming in-person before that date.  Many universities are running their classes online. However, some of the departments of public universities have not started online classes yet. Read: Educational institutions to remain shut until Oct 3 Private universities are completing semesters by taking exams online. Thus, the students of those universities are being deprived of practical learnings. Last week marked a groundswell of opinion in favour of reopening, with symbolic protests taking place across some institutions around the country, before the authorities backtracked once again.   One of these symbolic acts was at Rajshahi University, where a group of teachers declared they would start taking classes under a tree on campus if the classrooms are not opened. They then went ahead and started taking classes last Monday. RU Mass Communication and Journalism department associate professor Abdullah Al Mamun declared in a Facebook post that teachers were ready to take this seemingly quixotic step and a few teachers including Anthropology department associate professor Bokhtiar Ahmed and Folklore department assistant professor Md Amirul Islam expressed solidarity with him. Read: DU admission tests rescheduled amid pandemic Talking about the long closure of the institutions,  Abdullah Al Mamun said the government is opening the economy and garments industries to improve the country’s economy, but on the other hand, they are producing the unskilled population by closing the educational institutions. This will affect the country’s future, he said.   "Developed countries may have the technological opportunities but we have many obstacles for running online classes," he added. RU Anthropology department associate professor Bokhtiar Ahmed said, "This is a terrible thing that the educational institutions are closed for a long time. This costs a lot and causes economic, social and educational losses for this country. They could take online exams one year ago but they are taking the decision to take exams online now." He too pointed out that students from rural areas can’t join online classes due to network and device shortages. Online classes are thus not at all fruitful, he said. There are many differences between distance learning and face-to-face learning. Md Amirul Islam said such long-term closures cause "negative impacts" on students.  "Few students saw doctors to cure their mental illness as they were suffering from depression during the long closure. Some of them committed suicide. Therefore, we want to come back to the classroom as early as possible," Amirul Islam said. The teachers say there are many ways to protest against any decision of policymakers, and they chose to take symbolic classes so that their students can also  come and collaborate with them, as that would help their message reach the policymakers.