Personal Diary © Burhan Rasool

Just like the start of the first Alumni-Faculty meeting (held 4 years ago), the second meeting (held on Saturday, June 27, 2009) started with 3 unexpected & unnecessary bouncers from the faculty side, which forced the Alumni to play defensive, on the back foot. But then again, it was nothing new.

Alumni on the other hand kept their cool, spoke softly with the element of respect in their tone, and most impressively, they spoke when they were asked to speak.

The presence of Mr. Salman Mohsin of the first Batch of Lahore Campus and Mr. Nauman Sheikh of the third, added with greats like Wahaj Khan, Aqeel Ahmad, Javed Zahoor, etc. heightened the significance of the meeting further.

The analysis of Omeir Zahid was right on the dot and the observations of Aqeel (… “they-versus-us approach” and the “emerging bad mouthing trend amongst FAST graduates about FAST”) were so brutally true that it changed the atmosphere of the meeting. The role of Alumni in mentoring students made more sense.

Then the idea of an Alumni Day from the Director was highly appreciated, wherein Alumni would interact with Faculty Members and Students all day, playing sports, discussing issues, etc. and ending the day with a formal dinner.

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Now, if I go back to the basic objective of this meeting, which was to identify and mutually agree on the role of Alumni in building an academic institute like FAST, I think we were not only able to achieve that but also we were able to somewhat bridge the communication gap between Alumni and Faculty-Administration of Lahore Campus. Plus, if I add the outcome of the post-tea meeting (wherein Mr. Nauman Sheikh took the responsibility of arranging one year salary of a full-time Contractual employee who would help the Alumni Association better organize) to the list of achievements of the day, I think it would be fair enough to declare this meeting a success.

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As far as I can recall, with absolute grading system every student knew his target to get a good grade and we used to help each other out, sharing knowledge and helping others in need. No matter how tough the assignments were or how challenging the course project seemed, we performed because we were forced to perform. Get busy doing or get busy dying [Shawshank Redemption].
Maira Rahman, an Alumnus from Batch 2002, wrote in her article (Till Death Do We Part) in the Interface Magazine 2007-08, “In a battlefield, the survivor is that group who works as a team, and survives the pressure … united we stand, divided we fall. It was like a battlefield and everyone was in a battleship, and now the ship has reached the shore after a lot of hard work. The times were tough but together we made it. I always believe that when people are going through the same thing, they tend to come together. And when the time passes they disperse.”

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With the introduction of relative grading system the concept of getting something extraordinary out of an individual and to explore his unexplored potential, seem to exist no more. The cons of relative grading system seem to have out-performed its pros, leading to a continuous deterioration in the quality standards of FAST graduates.
Now the question is that why has the relative grading system not been able to improve, or at least maintain, the quality standard of FAST graduates? The answer to this question, in my opinion lies primarily in the groupthink philosophy in a highly cohesive group of people—a deterioration of mental efficiency, reality testing, and moral judgment that results from in-group pressure [Irving L. Janis].
The relative grading system, which was supposed to create a competitive environment failed to affect the heritage of cohesion amongst students making way for group/social psychology (of encouraging loafing and dejecting hard work) to prevail. As a result the collective seriousness of students towards their education decreased.
This group psyche developed because of multiple reasons, but mainly because of the [dash] mentality of just not giving out good grades which would have otherwise encouraged students to continue working harder. Plus the communication gap and Who-Cares attitude de-motivated further the average and the above-average student, making him feel like Mr. Nobody, his educational experience less inspiring and his stay at the University even lesser exciting.

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[These are my personal views. Everyone has the right to agree or disagree.]