Kanpur: Indian Institute of Technology – Kanpur (IIT-K) urges the parents not to provided first year students with laptops. The reason is that late night internet surfing hampers their studies. Also, the authorities are perturbed over cases of students committing suicide at the IIT-Kanpur. S S Kashalkar, Registrar, IIT-Kanpur, said that hostelers keep surfing the Internet throughout the night. Next morning students go for the classes tired due to lack of sleep. He added that therefore they are not able to concentrate on academics.
Kashalkar said that students in first year as such do not require laptops and if there is a need they can avail the facility at the institute's computer centres. He mentioned that students spend most of the study time surfing irrelevant websites, gossipping in chat rooms and playing interactive games on the Internet. There are 5000 students in IIT and it is not possible to keep an eye on whether one is asleep or on the net after midnight. Therefore, the authority has advised the parents not to provide laptops to their children in first year.
Furthermore, he said the institute is worried regarding the increasing incidents of suicides by students and taking all measures to de-stress them. The institute has psychiatrists, a yoga centre and a counselling centre for students to deal with the problem of stress. He added that there are playing grounds and other means of entertainment within the campus in order de-stress students.
