This submission is made by Shivanshika Samaddar (she/they) from the Batch of 2025. The author would like to thank Ashwin Arun (he/him) from the Batch of 2027 for their time and effort in contributing to the research and editing for this piece. The featured graphic has been designed by Ella (she/her) from the Batch of 2027.
Since I stepped back on campus, all I have heard around me is how ‘campus culture has been lost’ and ‘it just does not hit the way it used to’. Now, on some level, I understand why. The people who walked onto campus in 2022 were not the same who left in 2020; we barely had any examples of this elusive campus culture to work with- so we shoddily created a new one. This new campus culture isn’t much to write home about, to be fairly honest – our seniors had painted pictures of helpful seniors and batchmates, bountiful caches of momos at Amul, lip-smacking mess menus and students who weren’t constantly tired of being tired. Some of our optimism came from the wistfulness of being away from campus with no re-opening in sight, but as star-struck first years, we drank in every little detail we could scrape together, daydreaming about the limited picture of the campus that our seniors were able to provide to us. Our imagination was also, of course, fuelled by what we read on Glasnost, or more specifically, one unfortunate (?) piece on this shady website that gave us in-depth details of what I choose to call ‘generator culture’.
For about a decade, Glasnost has been the first place incoming batches turn to when they need a peek into what our campus culture stands for. On February 1st, 2014, Glasnost posted its very first piece, an unassuming report of the inaugural ceremony of Kairos. Back then, I suppose the scope of the newspaper was drastically different than it is now. If one were to go down that rabbit hole, they would find that the early posts dealt with a plethora of topics, all loosely tied together solely with the thread of Glasnost, without any common themes running through them. Back then, it was a melting pot of reviews, recommendations, and life hacks, with a little bit of university event reports sprinkled in to taste.
The NLU Delhi of 2014 to 2016 was certainly a fascinating phenomenon. As this article very aptly puts it, “We are, as of 28th February 2014, a very happening campus.” Reading posts from that era feels like being in a very different reality – 2014 was a year of different cultures clashing and moulding into one another. NLU Delhi had just introduced Kairos, our very own cultural fest, we wholeheartedly participated in sports events outside the University, we had a little chess club going on in the Boys’ Hostel and in the midst of all this, we also had cold shower therapy, which has arguably been the most consistent part of this idea of campus culture, along with the dogs of NLU Delhi and the constant struggle to keep them on campus.
As Glasnost finishes 10 years in the run (albeit with a few years of inactivity), I think it has proven to be far more than just a catalogue of shows that one could watch or reports of events taking place on campus. Every once in a while, I like to play Sherlock and deduce what our campus culture must have looked like in the years before we were a part of this institution, and it has always proven to be a rather fun activity. So, come along? (Ew, what am I? Dora the fucking Explorer?)
A decade is enough to change the way the world works, and it has most definitely been enough to change the way people within the twelve acres of the NLU Delhi campus work. Within a decade, the outside world has moved on at a frighteningly fast pace, with 2014 being the poster child for ‘the year that changed it all’. What one could definitely deduce about the campus culture included voicing opinions about current events of all sorts on Glasnost. The introduction of Bitcoin to a larger public, Telangana being recognised as a state, and heavy discourse over the BJP’s 2014 election win, with criticisms pouring in from all ends of the political spectrum (found here, here, and here), it would seem, were all a normal part of what campus culture used to be. At some point in 2016, this part of the culture changed when the era of inactivity settled into this platform, which I suppose also speaks volumes about how the campus culture transformed. Anyway, I digress.
“Life was not just limited to law school and jobs and moots. People actually cared. Even if you argue that they didn’t, they put up a good show, regardless.” – An alumni about the pre-COVID campus.
This university was a place where art flourished – well, as much as it can in a law university – and people enjoyed being a part of things that were not just limited to being additions to their CVs. It has been rather bleak to see how, as the murals from the cafeteria (as can be seen here) slowly stopped being its defining point, the idea of what ‘campus culture’ used to be also deteriorated. I am not sure if it is the result of a pandemic, but the campus does lack the character it used to have in all its glory. A senior informs me that we had a very vibrant music club and a functioning poetry club, and as a lot of those who have searched for NLU Delhi on YouTube might be aware, we also had aspiring sketch comedians.
That, I assume, was the brighter, more cheerful part of campus culture. For a first year stuck in the middle of a pandemic, the ideas of college events and co-curricular activities were enough to make us assume what the ideal ‘college’ would be like for us. Turns out, the Van Goghs who had painted this rosy picture of the campus for us had missed out on some details — details that would not have been amiss to the untrained eye but played a rather foundational aspect in the background. You see, if we had been slightly more focused on the CCTV cameras in the trees rather than the colourful flowers in the foreground, we would have realised that maybe, just maybe, the grey clouds circling above us were warnings, and not just aesthetic sunsets we could take pictures of.
The Glasnost of 2014 tells us that the campus was an open forum of discussion, with people like Ram Jethmalani present at Kairos while also hosting leaders such as Nilotpal Basu for talks. Today, the campus culture is such that we barely get a say in which legal luminaries the University facilitates us to engage with. On one hand, we have Tejasvi Surya and Lawrence Liang gracing the MCH (despite clear dissatisfaction from some parts of the student body), on the other hand, no clear reasoning is provided when a lecture by A. G. Perarivalan is cancelled three days before it is scheduled. (Due to the inactivity of Glasnost at the time, it was not documented, but The Wire’s report on the incident can be found here.)
At some point in the last 10 years, the relationship of the student body with the administration seems to have changed. Once upon a time, we knew how to laugh off the administration’s attempt to be a Grinch for Holi. Now, most interactions with the administration leave a lot of us feeling frustrated, tired, and angry. We would hold protests to fight for the rights of the labourers on campus and actually bring out fruitful results. Now, I don’t think there haven’t been active protests on campus since then. Quite the contrary, actually. There is, of course, a documented history of the Insaaf Posters incident (the three-part series on the same can be found here, here, and here). Then there was the MeToo movement in 2018 that shook the foundations of this campus (or so I would like to believe), but went completely undocumented.
If I had a nickel for every time there was a movement against sexual harassment in college that fizzled out due to the inactivity of the administration and the eventual burnout of motivation amongst the students due to said inactivity, I would have two nickels, which isn’t a lot of nickels, but it is unsurprising and demotivating that it has happened twice without any substantial kickbacks coming from it. Twice have the students fought and argued and negotiated with the administration, and all we have received are half-hearted promises of a better institution and a stricter system, both of which have not even come close to fruition. While scrolling through the Glasnost website, it was ironic to see how there were two whole pages full of discussion and discourse around the movement carried out by students against sexism (some of them can be found here, here, and here), followed by a gradual decline of interest in the topic, which was rounded off by one lonely post a few weeks later, which talked about how unfortunate it was that the discussion died off so quickly. Does the pattern sound familiar? For those reading in the future, I sincerely hope not.
This platform has allowed us to know that the students of NLU Delhi come from a history of fighting tooth and nail for the things they want, and yet it stands as a staunch representation of the fact that there is so much of our ‘campus culture’ that has not changed. The complaints of this space not being an inclusive one have remained, the results of protests are still meagre scraps provided to us as compensation, and the feeling of drowning in a sea of competition still chokes us, no matter which batch we are talking about. So personally, I think the statement that the campus culture has completely changed is incorrect, because the things that really needed change have remained the same.
Glasnost has meant a lot to people who were here before us, it means a lot to the people who are here right now, and I would like to believe that it would mean a lot to people who are here after us. In the midst of worrying about the job market, anticipating competition results, and stress-applying for internships, this website becomes a safe haven, and we would like for it to remain this way. We cannot predict whether it will stop functioning again, but this is a platform that has been reborn in times of need, when being on campus was suffocating, when students were very seriously questioning if they really had any rights at all. Bringing back this platform took 2405 days of holding out hope for a better future, 2405 days of campus culture that went undocumented, 2405 days of feeling unheard, unseen, and even unacknowledged.
Well, as I struggle to end this piece, with so much still left unsaid and unexplored about the campus that has been our home for five years – I think it is best to reflect on campus culture as something that has changed over the years, been destructed piece by piece, only to be reconstructed with something similar, almost the same. One could even call it our personal little Ship of Theseus: the more things changed, the more they stayed the same. (Editor’s Note: Glasnost does not endorse this radical conclusion drawn from the Ship of Theseus thought experiment.) Now, whether this is a new campus culture or if it is the same one is a question I will leave up to you, but as we step into the 11th officially functioning year of Glasnost, we hope that this place we have created continues to act as a hearth for all those in the future – a hearth that provides both warmth and fire to those who need it.
Glasnost: National Law University Delhi 