Bengaluru college ’dowry issue’ baseless and misinterpreted

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Bengaluru, Oct 22, 2017: It has come to light that St Joseph’s College (SJC) Bengaluru issued an official statement on October 21, Saturday after conducting an internal inquiry on the issue of a social media post, which showed that the study material allegedly circulated to 60 sociology students endorsed dowry.

“It is clear that no teacher has made pro-dowry statements in the class this emerged with utmost clarity from the accounts of both teachers and students. The method of Sociology requires students to look at opposing viewpoints carefully and we have found that the Facebook post had selectively cited extraneous material from one of the sourcebooks suggested, with no understanding of the process followed in the classroom,” the college stated.

The controversy arose after a Facebook post displayed a page of a study material titled ‘Advantages of Dowry’ and was soon shared and discussed across other social media platforms as well.

“The marriage of ugly girls, who would otherwise have gone without a partner, was made possible by offering heavy amount of dowry. It is a useful and effective method of attracting good, handsome and sometimes unwilling boys for marriage,” read the photocopied material which mentioned a total of seven points.

Dr Kiran Jeevan, Public Relations Officer of the college said that no student had raised this as a problem with the teacher concerned, the head of the department or with the Dean of Social Sciences. “The institution has always taken such representations through proper channels seriously and will continue to do so,” he said.

Students from the same class clarified that the matter was presented on social media out of context. “The particular page which surfaced on social media was one among the set of reference notes which were inadvertently photocopied during the month of July, just before the mid-semester exams. They never belonged to our course or the syllabus we follow,” said Sasha Stephens, a third year sociology student at SJC.