Thanks to my college schedule and early lectures, I haven’t been able to follow the news off late. The only resource from where I get news nowadays is an RSS Feed supplied by the BBC that I read in the train. (FYI, TOI Feed sucks)

A few days back I happened to have the time to read a newspaper and I came across a tiny article in Mumbai Mirror where they mentioned that a particular college would be fining a student Rs. 1000 /- if he was caught eating in the classroom. Then they asked several professors and other random people about their thoughts and each and every one of them was only against the high fine amount.

If this rule existed in college, I’d be fined a lot more than the annual fees of the college.
Doesn’t anyone realize that the problem is about the fine itself, not the amount.

What inconvenience does a student cause anyway when he/she eats in class? It’s such a trivial matter that simply asking the student to stop eating will solve the problem. Why is there a need to fine students?

A study conducted by a university years ago concurred with the fact that humans can imbibe more information after they’ve had their meals and when they’re having their meals.

Now you might state that if students can learn more after meals, why can’t they eat during the lunch break? Have you seen our effed up schedule? We have lectures starting from 7.30 am which means that most students don’t have a proper breakfast and we have our lunch break at 12 or 1pm. It’s easy to bear with attend the lectures before 10/11, but then it gets really uneasy and everyone tends to (or in most cases, they really do) sleep.

I feel the same way too and I have the option of either playing by the rules, understand nothing in class and having a nice sleep OR have a nice snack, understand something in class and stay awake for the entire duration of the lecture. I like to go home everyday learning something new, so my choice was fairly easy. The rest of the class on the other hand, looks at me in envy; wishing they could eat in class too but they don’t and learn nothing in the process.

I found this quote in a Quotation compilation in a book-store which said

"You gotta eat something if you wanna learn something! Eat nothing and you Learn Nothing." – Dr. Spix de Truth, Dept. of Nutrition (1967)

You can’t really argue with that. How can you just put a student in class for an hour letting him starve his ass off and still expect him to learn and score?

Kudos to the ’educationalist’ who came up with this brilliant idea of having an additional source of income for the college.

Luckily for us, this ’rule’ hasn’t interested the college authorities. (yet)

P.S: If you know which college started imposing the fines, please post a comment as I’d love to know. I’d also like to read your views on the subject.