How will the new room allocation for freshers at IIT Madras affect its culture?

The institute has been taking stringent steps to curb ragging/interactions in the hostels and this is one of them. According to me, the whole thing is outright stupid and would bring down the institute culture that each student residing at the hostels at IIT Madras takes pride in. Background: There are 15 hostels for the male residents out of which nearly 4 are PG hostels. The remaining being UG (undergraduate) hostels. For more background, read this article by the campus news body - The Fifth Estate : http://t5e.iitm.ac.in/2013/07/room-allotment/ which makes a very good unbiased analysis of the situation. The Story : The UG freshers every year are housed with UG seniors in UG hostels. There are innumerable intra- and inter-hostel events that are conducted throughout the year and all these events and happenings describe the institute's culture. The UG hostels are buzzing with enthusiasm all through the year. The freshers being new to the place meet seniors, interact and form bonds, and it often happens that the seniors whom the freshers interact with help them immensely in academic and non-academic issues, someone who can be there for them when they are down, and can assure them - "Been there, done that. Nothing to worry". The intra-hostel events are conducted as a preparation for the Inter-Hostel events - which include the Literary and Social Activities and events that happen (Lit-Soc), Technical activities and events (Tech Soc) and Schroeter (Sports - Inter hostel) - All of which have rolling trophies for them, and it is the freshers who participate in these events for the hostel, and a couple of seniors who do participate, and this drives into the students a sense of "hostel spirit" and the much talked about harmless inter-hostel rivalry. All this had been great fun for any fresher for an IIT-M, and gives the student a sense of "belonging" to the place which becomes their home. However, this is not the case with PG (postgraduate) hostels. The participation although open to all the hostels every year, has almost zero participation from the PG students in the events which are discussed above. Also, moving the UG freshers into the PG hostels means that there will be just 2 or 3 hostels where the UG freshers are moved into and the events will no longer make sense. Also, the biggest motivation for seniors in UG hostels to participate in events is because of the enthusiasm among the freshers and to continue the tradition of winning certain events for the past couple of years and continue doing so. The PG seniors tend to not interact much with people, because of their busy schedule. Unlike in UG hostels there would hardly be anyone who would go out of the way to help or talk to the freshers when need be. Also, if this is a move by the administration copying ideas from IIT-B and IIT-Kgp, it must be noted that ragging/interactions do exist in these colleges in the second year, since freshers are in separate hostels for the first year. So this defeats the purpose of separation. Also academics gets serious from the second year onwards, and people hardly come out of their hostel rooms once they get their laptops. This means that the whole sense of belonging to a certain hostel and taking part in the events for the hostel is lost. Also, this might create pressure in the UG freshers since the competition is very high and they would always be surrounded by their peers, limiting the extent of interaction with others. That said, there have been cases where very few students had been subjected to bad treatment during the interactions. But that is a minority. And the UG freshers in that case have every right to report the senior to the police, since the ragging laws in India have become strict. But it is sad that a majority of the population, this being the formative years in their lives would be having a not-so-good UG experience because of the administration's move. And like one of my friends posted on Facebook recently in relation with the IITM room allocation about the Admin trying to "parent" the freshers: However, the administration thinks that the students have a very short-sighted view with regards to the issue. As a matter of fact it can also happen that the pressure to perform well academically becomes so high that the students might succumb to the pressure. On the positive side, if all works fine, we might have a new culture that is developed in the institute, but it only seems less likely with the intrusion of the administration and if the administration goes on a spree curbing freedom, it might be very unlikely that the students might become mature individuals and build a good personality apart from excelling academically. It will create only more resentment towards the administration. Problems for the Hostel Secretaries : The hostel secretaries would be in for a rough time now. The secretaries of the PG hostels would be baffled with the number of UG first years who would be joining the hostel, as it takes more efforts to mentor so many students at once. The secretaries in the PG hostels would not have been prepared to take up such big responsibilities since they would not have been aware of the institute's new policies while they wrote their manifestos and stood for elections. Disclaimer : All views expressed here are personal. The word ragging here is used in a very loose sense, and does not mean "ragging" in terms of physical/mental/social abuse. I'll try to update the answer and add more points when I have more time. Thanks for the A2A!