Bye Bye Thampu: Will the New St Stephen’s Principal be Luckier?

Dear Mr Verghese, we worry for you. You have your job cut out as the new principal of St Stephen’s College.

Things are suddenly looking up for St Stephen’s College.

The college has been in the limelight for more wrong reasons than right in the past few years, and they have all centred around one man, and one man alone – Reverend Valson Thampu, man of swishing black robes, denouncer of much-loved “samosa wallahs” and open antagonist of long and illustrious lists of alumni.

Thampu – since holding the post in 2008 – never curried much favour with ex-students (and many present), with most of them baying for his resignation.

The man – who once described himself as ‘Dawood Ibrahim’ for all his detractors – officially retired from his post yesterday, February 29. He hands over the mantle to one John Varghese, who takes over as principal on March 1.

Varghese, of the English and Foreign Languages University, Hyderabad was picked out of three applicants – the other two were Karen Gabriel of St Stephen’s College and Susan Varghese of St John’s College, Agra. According to the retiring principal, two rounds of applicants had to be sought, since “there were only two applicants” the first time.

“I asked some of the outstanding alumni too but everybody was reluctant to apply considering the ‘controversial’ nature of the post,” said Thampu.

(Funny, but are we the only ones who just tripped a little bit on that ‘some of the outstanding’ barb?)

Varghese is not a Stephen’s alumnus, but a product of Loyola College, Chennai. He did, however, teach English in St Stephen’s for sometime in the ’90s before joining EFLU. Being the administrative head of Stephen’s will be a whole different ball game though, and these are some of the challenges that he’ll have to face:

Make Women a Priority

Let’s not have the pointless excuses for General Body Meetings that Thampu convened, shall we? In 2013, there was uproar over the unfair parity in curfew timings for male and female students. Men could stay out longer and women would be physically locked into their blocks by 10 o’clock. Seeking to address the issue, Thampu called a GBM and ended up insulting everyone and mostly, his own intelligence when he went on a long diatribe calling men and women as different as “apples and oranges, eggs and stones”.

It isn’t just the curfew; only last year, a research scholar from college accused an assistant professor in the chemistry department of sexually assaulting her. Instead of pulling all stops to help her, Thampu appeared to be shielding the accused – amid allegations that he had also pressured her to withdraw her complaint. Mr Varghese, when you do take over the college, please make sure women feel safer, like equals and not a minority.

Let Students Voice Their Opinion

The college would do better without another Devansh Mehta repeat, thank you very much. This, in the current politically-charged scenario, where debates over ‘free speech’ are ranging high and wide. Encourage debate, sir. Open more channels of communication. During the Devansh Mehta debacle – the ex-principal had summarily suspended an e-zine and a student for an interview where he had said some pretty unsavoury things about the faculty. That he wanted to hide the same from the public became all the more evident when he suspended Mehta, the editor of the magazine, on the grounds that “permission hadn’t been sought” to publish the article.

Mr Varghese, do tread gently to make sure you don’t come across as high-handed – something that went hand-in-hand with Thampu.

Make Up With the Alumni

There’s MUCH to be done here. We don’t want to freak you out, Mr Verghese, but if you’ll look at your how-to-rule-ststephenscollege-and-not-make-a-mess-of-it handbook, you’ll find previous principals have circled just one word, rather ominously in red. ALUMNI.

The college’s rather illustrious alumni – who range from Shashi Tharoor and Mani Shankar Aiyyar to Arvind Subramaniam and Ramachandra Guha – are constantly looking at/over/near the college. Think of them as the ghosts of Stephen’s past that never go away. The college’s Old boys and Girls’ network is a strong, faithful one and you (and the college) could do with some good publicity if you had them on your side. Your predecessor had a whale of a time clashing with them for about a decade.