'Allocate space at JU arts bldg as per master plan'

The teachers made the demand in the wake of the university authorities' decision of shifting two more departments in the new building defying its master plan.

The departments of English and Philosophy were shifted to ground floor of the new building from old arts faculty building in 2001 with the promise to provide them with more rooms on completion of the first floor.

According to master plan, the ground floor can accommodate only one department along with a dean complex, conference and seminar rooms and teachers' lounge.

A total of 15 batches of students of English and Philosophy departments are attending classes in seven rooms and altercation between the students of different batches often takes place over the occupation of rooms during class-hour.

The English department has 12 rooms for teachers against a demand of 17 while Philosophy has 10 rooms against 16.

Though teachers and general students of the arts faculty requested the university authorities several times for resolving the room crisis, no action was taken in this regard.

As the construction work of the first floor of the new building took more than four years to complete, room crisis became acute in other five departments located at old building, forcing university authorities to think of shifting two more departments in the new building.

In old arts faculty building, five departments including History, Bangla and Drama & Dramatics are carrying out academic activities in eleven classrooms.

Of them, only five are usable as the rest are too small to accommodate all the students of a batch.

Each department has at least seven batches of students and two to three teachers are sharing the same room.

"We need to hold a discussion between the teachers of all the departments in the faculty and authorities concerned as it is a long standing crisis," said Prof Md Nasir Uddin, dean of arts faculty.