University of Delhi (DU) on Friday directed college principals, department heads, and hostel wardens to conduct comprehensive safety audits of their respective premises to strengthen women’s safety on campus.
The directive follows an online meeting with key university and college stakeholders, including principals, deans, and directors. It also follows protests by female students over the past few weeks, demanding enhanced security measures around college campuses. Besides these measures, the university also emphasised the need to increase police around the campus, including dedicated surveillance teams stationed strategically near colleges and hostels, and installation of sufficient pink booths, and increased usage of Vamika police van. Further, organisation of gender sensitisation workshops along with a seven-day self defence crash course for students in collaboration with the police has been recommended, the university stated. The university has asked officials of colleges, department, and hostel to work with its engineering department to carry out an infrastructure audit, and immediately take up any urgent repair work.
The move comes in the wake of the alleged gang rape of a 17-year-old school student in the Kalkaji area and incident of sexual harassment involving two female students of DU in Mukherjee Nagar.
