- A committee has been appointed to investigate over 2,000 cases of ragging, including serious physical, mental, and sexual abuse
- Between January 2017 to June 2018, the University Grants Commission (UGC) received 434 ragging complaints. Thousands more suffer in silence. The UGC has a separate process for ragging complaints
- This should be seen as a national crime since a large number of suicides, mutilations, and grievous injuries have been committed
- Ragging deaths are one of the controversies in a State education system funded by taxpayers
- Stress level: Stress or momentary stress may lead to exhaustion, frustration, difficulties in thinking clearly, self-doubt, anxiety, and in some cases a disturbance of both physical and mental abilities due to the perception of and expectation of massive amounts of pressure. Physiologically, there may be various symptoms from heartbeat to back pain, irritable bowel, respiratory problems, and elevated blood pressure.
- Anxiety: Anxiety can lead to excessive sweating, giddiness, nausea, elevated heart rate, feeling of fear, and trouble sleeping, marked by deep worries. It can be challenging for nervous students to focus. If you cannot finish tasks, then that causes a loss of self-value. Loss of sleep and digestive disorders will make their problems even worse. For these cases, issues of mental health such as phobia, depression, suicide, and panic attacks can occur.
- Depression: A mental condition marked by an intense sadness over a period of time, depression typically affects every part of one's life, along with feelings of remorse, indignity, and changes in the way one behaves.
- Enhanced orientation programme of what academic life in a university entails: Students need to be shown that there is far more to university life than the narrow confines they appear to be in at present. There is more than ragging, exams, and getting a degree certificate.
- Orientation by law enforcement authorities: The Police, Attorney General’s (AG) Department lawyers, judges, psychologists, etc., should be brought in to educate students on the consequences of ragging and being convicted of ragging. They need to be shown in no uncertain terms that those who rag will face the full wrath of the law.
- Student counselling: Proper professional counselling must be implemented for students to open up about their pain, experienced both in childhood and in university. This will also inspire young people and newcomers to be empathetic. Most students are not open to talk about the ordeals they have experienced with their parents which leads to sadistic behaviour.
- Student interactions: Interactions and conversations on issues such as ragging are particularly relevant. The university will schedule collaborative student sessions on different subjects from time to time. During their college years and beyond, they will interact well.
- Senior and fresher students interactions: Encouraging healthy relationships between senior students and new students will create a supportive atmosphere. The university must organise different activities that help students crack the ice.
- Occupy their time: Sri Lanka’s university students appear to have an enormous amount of time on their hands, in contrast to those in the private sector educational institutions and foreign universities. They should be made to utilise their time productively by enhancing graduation requirements to include mandatory publication of academic articles, participation in sports and extracurricular activities, and community service activities. These are our best and brightest, whose most productive years are being wasted. Healthy pursuits such as character building, building self-confidence, and polishing personality would serve students just as much as, if not more than, simply studying and lecturing in universities. Internships and part-time work in the state and private sector from the very first year in university would also be useful.
- Police posts should be set up throughout every campus and manned 24 hours a day.
- Emergency telephones should be in strategic locations. When simply knocked off the phone mount, presumably by a student in danger, the Police should be rushed to the scene.
- CCTV camera use: In order to control violent activity on campus, every corner of every campus must be monitored. CCTV cameras should be placed at entrances to washrooms, corridors, halls, canteens, hostels, and playgrounds. It's hard to rag a junior when seniors know that they are being watched.
- Anti-ragging squads: They should set up a team that battles ragging in the university premises. The team will be made up of students from different classes, ages, and socioeconomic backgrounds.
- Punishments/expulsion: 180,000 students qualified to enter and only 30,000 received places. If any of them are involved in ragging, which means committing violent crimes, they should be expelled. There are tens of thousands more waiting to take their place. Ragging happens when the guilty person knows the authorities are lenient, but the guilty persons would find it difficult if the penalties were to be stricter.
- Leave law enforcement to law enforcement authorities: Academics are not trained in law enforcement, which is a practical profession and not an academic one. The responsibility for law enforcement on and off campus must be clearly placed upon the Police and the AG’s Department. Academics should not intervene once a crime is committed.
- Public shaming: A public register should be compiled of names of those convicted of ragging.
- Ban on government jobs: Eliminate opportunities for raggers, since they would clearly be unfit to become good civil servants.
- Punish aiding and abetting: Those who aid or abet ragging should also face penalties such as suspension.
- Political parties: Any political party whose affiliated student unions are found to have promoted ragging should face criminal and civil proceedings, in the same manner that the head chapters of fraternities in the US do so.
- Legal aid: At orientation, lawyers and judges should brief freshers on their legal options in the event they are ragged. These include making police complaints as well as obtaining injunctions that would prevent the raggers from coming into contact with the victims.
- Hotlines: Numbers should be prominently displayed for hotlines for victims to call, including suicide prevention and legal aid.