Suicide of Nitin Kumar, and Dean's response

[Vikram Srinivas]

Dear all, 
               I am sure you are aware of the tragic death of a IITM student, Nitin Kumar Reddy a.k.a. Swamy/Firestallion. Nitin was in his final year of Dual Degree Mechanical Engineering. He committed suicide on Wednesday, shortly after his professor informed him that he had obtained a six month extension since his DDP was not satisfactory.

There are several deep issues which this tragedy, coming soon after two other suicides this year,  raises, and I will not attempt to mention them all here. However, I hoped that the administration would take some steps towards ensuring that such tragedies do not occur again. 

Instead, I was shocked to see reports in Times of India quoting Dean of Students Prof. M. Govardhan dismissing the entire incident, and displaying no sensitivity whatsoever to the death of an IITM student. He asks ToI why they are "always reporting negative news about IIT Madras" , and advises them that "death 3 out of 5000 students is not statistically important"

(Link http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/chennai/Day-after-suicide-at-IIT-M-blame-game-on/articleshow/8172860.cms)

If you feel like protesting against this horrible attitude, please sign this letter which will be presented to the administration with all signatures on the 7th of May https://spreadsheets.google.com/spreadsheet/viewform?formkey=dGhKZ0xZbFE1YVpmQmo3aTdEVnlOWHc6MQ

If any of you have any ideas on how we can express displeasure in stronger ways, do let me know !

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Thanks and regards,
Vikram Srinivas
Hardware Engineer - Mobile R&D
NVIDIA Graphics Pvt. Ltd.

vsri...@nvidia.com
Ph : 080-66915067