The Blog I Never Imagined Writing About CUS (And Its “Legendary” Director)
We think we know a system—until the day we step inside it.
I walked into the Centre for Undergraduate Studies with assumptions, half-truths, and campus gossip. A month later, those assumptions have been shaken, re-shaped, and in some cases, turned upside down. This is the story of how a bell, a Director, and a demanding system taught me more about discipline, empathy, and leadership than any theory ever could.
There’s a saying we all know too well:
It is easy to criticise a system—until you become part of it.
One month ago, that was me. And one month ago, that was exactly how I looked at Prof. Sam Solomon and the Centre for Undergraduate Studies (CUS). Like many others, I had my assumptions, my grievances, and—let me be brutally honest—my prejudices.
I had often heard that Sam Sir was a “difficult person,” “strict,” “unapproachable”—the kind of senior you politely avoid in corridors. I had hardly ever interacted with him myself, but the campus grapevine had already written the script for me. When I taught in the FYUGP last semester, the comments I heard only reinforced those stories.
And yes, the bell—that infamous bell—was the cherry on top.
Having done my undergraduate studies at Maharaja’s College and my postgraduate studies in this University, the last time I lived by a bell was in my +2 classes. Imagine my shock. I even wrote a rather strong blog calling the bell “undemocratic” and the person responsible for it “authoritarian.”
Little did I know life was preparing its punchline.
A Role I Never Imagined Taking
Suddenly, I was given additional charge as the Academic Coordinator of CUS.
I had no roadmap, no idea what the role demanded, and honestly, no mental preparation to work this closely with someone I had mentally categorised as “impossible to work with.”
So I did the most sensible thing:
I started spending time at CUS to understand the nature of the work—and more importantly, the person running it.
What I saw in the first week itself unsettled everything I thought I knew.
The Man Behind the Position: A 24×7 Presence
It became obvious very quickly that Prof. Sam Solomon lives and breathes CUS. He is there—truly there—for every single detail, every issue, every student.
Teachers often assume administrators don’t understand the nuances of curriculum, assessment, or classroom realities. But Sam Sir does. In fact, he is more thorough with curricular matters than many of us who teach those papers.
And then there is his familiarity with students.
I have never once seen him ask a student their name or department. He knows them. All of them. And remember, CUS handles students from 16 different major departments—this isn’t a small departmental ecosystem where you see the same faces every day.
We often celebrate student-centric administrators in theory. Here is one in practice.
My Three Biggest Complaints—Turned Upside Down
Let me address the “infamous three”:
The Bell
The Tight Class Schedule
Attendance
These were issues I resisted passionately. My undergraduate days had none of this. We had freedom—luxurious, unstructured, taken-for-granted freedom. We assumed self-responsibility because we lived in a time when distractions were fewer and the stakes, ironically, lower.
But the world has changed.
Today’s students step into University campus directly from school. They face unprecedented digital fatigue, attention collapse, employment anxieties, and socio-emotional vulnerabilities that my generation did not know.
In such a scenario, is the bell authoritarian?
Yes.
Is it also necessary?
Also yes.
The bell is not about infantilising students—it is about holding the learning environment together in a time where the thin line between freedom and chaos is constantly tested.
The tightly packed schedule?
It is tiring, I agree. But it also builds resilience, discipline, and the competence to thrive in a world where everything—right or wrong—is becoming brutally competitive.
And attendance?
The hard truth is this: many students, especially from underprivileged backgrounds, get left behind if they are not gently—but firmly—guided into academic discipline. I have seen students losing attendance due to carelessness, falling into academic decline simply because they had no one at home to guide them.
The rules are strict not because someone enjoys strictness, but because without them, the vulnerable students fall first.
This is something Sam Sir understands with clarity and compassion.
What Teaching Has Taught Me About Today’s Students
Let me be completely honest here.
My batch at the Institute of English had no bells, no micro-management—but we also never imagined we had the right to stroll in late. We respected the space, the teacher, the subject.
Today, when I tried to implement even the gentlest discipline—like asking questions at the beginning of class—the response I received was:
“Ma’am, we cannot keep studying all the time.”
That was the moment I realised how drastically the academic ethos has shifted.
Critical theory—my own subject—demands intellectual labour, consistency, and curiosity. Yet many students today struggle to engage with readings, let alone reflect upon them. This is not their fault alone; it is the outcome of a world saturated with distraction and neoliberal consumption.
So when the system introduces structures like bells or schedules, it is not to control them—it is to protect their learning.
The Biggest Beast: Conducting Exams
If classroom management is difficult, exam management is an epic saga.
CUS has no pool of teachers under its administrative control. Invigilation depends on departments, and departments often raise genuine constraints. But in this centralised system, CUS cannot dictate who should do what and when.
Departments often raise concerns such as:
“Why should we invigilate when none of our papers are scheduled?”
“Our teachers are engaged in other academic responsibilities, so we cannot spare anyone for duty. Please make alternative arrangements."
And then come the practical issues:
a few teachers who arrive late
a few who relax on chairs scrolling social media
a few who expect CUS to magically fill gaps created by last-minute refusals
These are uncomfortable truths, but truths nonetheless. And as for getting question papers prepared on time—let’s just say that’s a thriller all by itself!
CUS is the centrepiece of a massive institutional shift. Yet it has none of the structural powers that colleges have. The Director ends up absorbing the pressure from departments, teachers, students, and the system above.
It is an administrative tightrope.
And he walks it, every single day.
Change, Whether We Like It or Not
Whether we personally agree with FYUGP or not, the system is here. The last time we saw such a major shift (in my lifetime) was when Pre-degree was delinked and Higher Secondary was introduced. That transition too brought chaos, confusion, resistance. But it stabilised, eventually.
Change always disrupts comfort zones.
Systems evolve.
Structures shift.
We adapt—or we fall behind.
At CUS, we don’t have the luxury of ideological stubbornness. We have students—real students—depending on us.
In the End, What Do We Owe the Students?
We owe them:
discipline, not authoritarianism
structure, not rigidity
empathy, not excuses
guidance, not mere instruction
systems that support them, not silence them
Criticism is necessary.
But criticism without responsibility is merely noise.
Sam Sir, for all the strong opinions people have about him, stands at the centre of this storm and continues to work relentlessly—often invisibly—for students who will never fully know how much their education depends on the system he holds together.
Working with him has pushed me to grow in ways I didn’t expect.
It has been humbling.
And eye-opening.
And, unexpectedly, deeply transformative.
A Final Thought
We are well past the debate of whether undergraduate programmes should exist in universities. The system has moved on. The only question that remains is:
Are we willing to set aside our egos, step out of our silos, and work together to make this transition less painful for the students who trust us?
Constructive criticism is welcome.
Sincerity is welcome.
Solutions are welcome.
What is not welcome—what is harmful—is apathy masquerading as intellectual superiority.
At the end of the day, everything we do here must serve the students. And sometimes, service requires discipline; sometimes, patience; sometimes, humility—and often, all three at once.
As a student who's a part of CUS, I'm really glad I got to read this. After joining FYUGP I had my own assumptions, and trusting those half based rumours. For me, Sam sir is literally a backbone of CUS. I have never seen such a man who works with the students rather than pushing his authority over. To be honest, my view of him as a scary director changed when I heard him singing on our first onam celebration at CUS. And I wish more students from CUS reads this so some of their perspective will change accordingly and try to co-operate more into this system and make it working out together.
ReplyDeleteThank you.
Hey,
ReplyDeleteI have read the whole blog and I appreciate the reflexivity in your perception. It’s courageous to admit that stepping inside a system changed your perspective, and to acknowledge how what felt like authoritarianism began seeming like “care” and “structure.” But as an fyugp student, I STRICTLY OPPOSE your ideology connecting authoritarianism to discipline. Imagine the colonial rule arguing the same like "we are ought to be the people who control you" because "you folks are vulnerable and there is a potential that you can turn to a wrong person" .Is that appropriate?.
This framing of bells, schedules and attendance as benign tools of discipline risks masking deeper structural problems. When a schedule and bell become metaphors of “structure” and “security,” it glosses over the fact that such systems don’t treat all students equally. Hence the following concerns and opinions reflects my take on it.
1. Your perception claims that strict attendance and class-control saves “vulnerable students” from falling behind. But in many real academic settings, these rigid controls disproportionately punish students with unstable backgrounds especially those who may need flexibility (working students, caregivers, people with mental health or socio-economic constraints). A bell doesn’t recognize personal crises. It's a mechanical tool.
2. By framing control as compassion, you imply that absence or non-conformity is due to irresponsibility or lack of discipline, not systemic neglect of supporting diverse student realities.
3.This argument states that students must adapt to hyper-dense, high-performance structures as if endurance under pressure is virtue. It is not.
4. It undervalues critical thinking, creativity, rest, and well-being. It discourages dissent, spontaneity, and the kind of intellectual curiosity that often lies at the heart of progressive, socially aware education.
5. Praising individuals to defend structural authoritarianism is a classic tactic that diverts attention from systemic accountability. Whether it’s Prof. Sam Solomon or someone else, the core issue remains which is, a system that demands conformity and surveillance over autonomy.
Is this truly the only way? Or have alternative pedagogies have been ruled out because they challenge institutional control? How can you address the issues of SPORTS STUDENTS/ STUDENT ATHLETES by enforcing 8:30 am strict schedules on them? Was there any effort from CUS to record the academic workload of students officially ? Is there any feedback systems?
By romanticizing authoritarian discipline as “compassionate structure,” your blog does what many institutions do, it blurs the line between care and control, protection and suppression. What it calls “discipline” may quietly reproduce inequalities, silence dissent, and privilege conformity.
Real educational justice demands more than bells. It demands empathy, flexibility, inclusivity and most deeply, trust.
I am not completely neglecting the fact that the respected director have truly done some efforts to embrace fyugp curriculum and it's smooth implication. But we expect a TEACHER/MENTOR/GUIDE from him that guides or directs the way NOT a FATHER/GRANDFATHER/ANY OF OUR RELATIVES that have total authority on us.
The bell of CUS can symbolize the 'Pavlov's Bell of Conditioning', and us, students are not an experiment animal of Pavlov who strives to fit into institutional rat race.
If any of my words created mental/emotional harm, I truly apologize for the case. This is just a small criticism from an fyugp student. Hope you would consider it that way.
Thank You.
Thank you for your comments. I appreciate the fact that you cared to read the entire blog before responding to it. As I mentioned in the blog, I did not encounter any of the disciplining systems we know have at CUS. And again, generalising my comments is not how I have presented my argues. I do not say that all students are vulnerable. And I perfectly understand that learning always do not happen within the confines of a classroom. But we are now in the second year of FYUGP and I see many students on the verge of being dropouts. If we need to make provisions for each student differently, it demands human resource and technology which the system unfortunately do not have right now. Again, I am completing 18 years of service in the Higher Education sector of Kerala and I have seen a steady decline in the academic quality of students which is most often inversely proportional to their sense of discipline. Again, Sam Sir cannot be a mentor to all the students. Thete it is the respective departments
DeleteThere it is the respective departments that have to ensure mentors for each batch and if it is not functioning effectively, the departments are responsible. And again he is not trying to be a father figure but just trying to bring into the fold students who would have had more reasons to quit the system. Every freedom should be used responsibly and that calls for a sense of discipline.
ReplyDeleteThe CUS and Director prides itself on discipline, and rightly so - the attendance and timing are top-notch. But where's the discipline in delivering results on time? It's been 6 months, and still no official word. The students are left hanging. If the system expects discipline from its students, shouldn't it reflect that in its own functioning? The bell's attention to this matter would be greatly appreciated.
ReplyDeleteThere is a limit to what CUS Director alone can do to ensure timely publishing of results.
DeleteI dont know weather you remember but once you wrote " Yes, in the land of knowledge, authoritarianism often wears a shawl and glasses.
ReplyDeleteAnd we wonder why democracy crumbles outside when it’s starved of breath inside our classrooms."
Definitely. I have specifically stated my earlier impressions of the bell in this blog as well.
DeleteHow can one ever justify the strict schedules as necessary in order to instill "discipline" or "resilience" or "competence"? FYUGP students were promised "academic flexibility" and an "abundance of courses to choose from" and that the courses were structured around "student-centric values" which supposedly was meant to facilitate working students or academically adventurous students. The promises made were contradicted in the first semester itself.
ReplyDeleteThere is no empirical evidence that suggests such a schedule would enforce discipline (considering if instilling discipline should even be something a university should be doing to its students) and it makes the students obviously less competent. You might've been right about it making students resilient, as this schedule being enforced on them are making students resist this system that is suffocating them. It is a rightist approach to education that you've been advocating and praising for throughout this entire blog, even after considering the immense effort and heart you've put into it, (which I'm appreciative of) how can such a conservative and outdated system of education be praised to this degree?
At the end of the day, in a capitalist system, the subject of praise in your blog is nothing but a cog in the machine, another rat in the race, and unfortunately, he is incapable of fighting against the system as he possesses no revolutionary spirit. He is not a legend, or a sculptor nor an architect or a storyteller. A man who nitpicks his students when they're five minutes late, whether they've run into traffic or overslept because of the infamous load of assignments and seminars and cares not if the students cannot balance their work and academics, is just another compliant servant of the system, nothing else.
I apologize if this is a long read or if I come across as rude, but I felt like this needed to be said; and I ask you to read every sentence with an open mind.
ReplyDeleteFirst and foremost, I would like to mention that I do understand some of your emotions, and I also understand how daunting it must have been, to suddenly have such a great responsibility put on your shoulders. Being the academic coordinator to 500 plus students is a task that demands patience, sincerity, and pure dedication, and I respect the fact that you willingly took on the mantle.
But reading through this post genuinely made me feel disorientated - simply because of how surreal it was, reading it as an FYUG student. The lived realities of several of my batchmates, and some of my own experiences contradict nearly every point you’ve mentioned in your post. It’s frankly shocking to see something so absurd from someone so highly educated in literature, philosophy, and the like - and I'll detail each and every point I have an issue with.
The entire post reeks of what can be described as a very inappropriate idealization of reality; by choosing to ignore hard facts, it seems like delusional flattery or hero-worship. You have effectively deified him with the title of the post and various passages talking about his supposed virtues. Doing this with anyone is abnormal, but seeing Prof. Sam Solomon in that regard is staggeringly worse.
“A month later, those assumptions have been shaken, re-shaped, and in some cases, turned upside down. This is the story of how a bell, a director, and a demanding system taught me more about discipline, empathy, and leadership than any theory ever could.”
This does not convey what you think it does. In this scenario, your opinions turning “upside down” in a single month means that in one month, you were successfully able to turn a blind eye to every single complaint and problematic aspect that students and faculty alike have brought up about him and live in grand delusion; admiring a single man while ignoring and silencing dozens of aggrieved. Think critically for a moment: If 100 people you know have a problem with a particular someone, and then you meet them and your initial impressions are positive, is your first instinct to invalidate the experiences of the 100? That is effectively what you have done with this post.
“The Director ends up absorbing the pressure from departments, teachers, students, and the system above. It is an administrative tightrope. And he walks it, every single day.”
ReplyDeleteBeing able to work under an immense amount of pressure is a commendable trait, I agree. And as the director, yes, he is under a lot of external pressure, from the whole system. But that is not the full extent of the story here. “Pressure” in this context is also a veil for him to disguise his failure in carrying out the duties he is supposed to as director, especially when it is about students’ concerns. There is “pressure”, but he shuts down the pressure he deems insignificant. He lets it enter through one ear and exit through the other while remaining totally nonchalant about it. I wish to point out that this pressure doesn’t come out of trivial issues nor does it come from a vacuum; be it faculty, departments, or students, it is very often about real, perceivable, critical problems that require his attention, as director of the CUS. If he walks a “tightrope”, it is for his own amusement and according to his own whims. Not to cater to the needs of the students. I will illustrate just two examples, of several.
The starting period of the first semester was full of promises, highlighting the flexibility of the FYUG programme, all the courses available, and all its special provisions for students and their well-being. One very prominent promise was aimed at students who wished to seek part-time employment: that academics would not be the sole focus, and since we only had classes till noon, they could have enough time for their work. 6 months later, before the second semester, the initial timetable (later revised) showed classes till the evening. When the director was asked how the students doing part-time jobs would cope with this, his response was quite insincere, something along the lines of “Do whatever work you want, but do not let it interfere with your academics.” Most students doing part-time jobs are often in no position to decide their own hours. Yet another failed promise made to the students engaged in sports was mentioned by another commentor. Shortly afterwards, in an online orientation session with nearly all the FYUG students, he mentioned in the beginning that students could voice their concerns at the end and we could have a discussion. When some students did voice their concern about the class timings extending to the evening and how it would be difficult for students living far away from campus, they were promptly shut down - according to him, this wasn’t a real issue. This is a recurring theme - whenever you have to approach him with a problem or grievance, he almost immediately tries to assert dominance over you by speaking in a condescending, patronizing manner, and then he intimidates you into believing that whatever problem you have is not a real problem at all. This attitude has been reported by several students of FYUG, and also notably several parents, when they interacted with him during the “PTA Meeting” in semester 3 (which is yet another unmistakably silly concept in any reputable university). In the beginning, when you said you had heard that he was “a difficult person,” “strict,” “unapproachable”, please understand that none of these concepts came out of thin air. As another commenter brilliantly put it, we expect a teacher or mentor or guide who can understand our problems and respect them, not some ridiculous patriarch who tells us that our issues are meaningless.
“The hard truth is this: many students, especially from underprivileged backgrounds, get left behind if they are not gently—but firmly—guided into academic discipline. I have seen students losing attendance due to carelessness, falling into academic decline simply because they had no one at home to guide them.
ReplyDeleteThe rules are strict not because someone enjoys strictness, but because without them, the vulnerable students fall first.
This is something Sam Sir understands with clarity and compassion.”
This is one of the sections that infuriated me the most. What do you mean, when you say that the director understands the condition of the vulnerable students? Generalizing them, saying that they lose attendance due to “carelessness” is a very insidious statement that knowingly or unknowingly comes from a place of closeted caste supremacy and privilege. There is no understanding, there is no clarity, and there is no compassion. You’ve classified these students as “underprivileged” and “vulnerable”, but what have you done to help them? They’ve been dropped into an intimidating university setting in a society that wants to see them fail, and all you have done is bully and police them, and now you’re applauding
yourself; telling yourself that you’re doing a good job. Quoting you, if Prof. Sam Solomon is a student-centric administrator, and he knows the students (all of them!), so well, then he’s genuinely turning a blind eye to this problem, and HE is the problem.
The system is built on fear and intimidation. You talk about students on the verge of dropping out like it’s some act of god or unforeseen natural calamity - of course it’s going to happen if you don’t give them a support structure! I’ve personally seen “vulnerable” students struggling to keep up with their academics because at the age of 18, they work part-time to put food on the table for their family. And you have the audacity to call them careless.
I dare you to take the list of students who couldn’t write the S3 exams due to their attendance or those who failed in earlier exams, and identify how many of them come from these vulnerable backgrounds that you were “progressive” enough to identify. What support system have you given to them? What sensitivity did you practice then? You preach inclusivity and consideration, but at the end of the day what have you actually done? And you’re going to “gently, but firmly” guide them? What a joke. You very happily kept them from writing the exams, while some students at the opposite end of vulnerable, who barely attended 5 classes the entire semester, suddenly had angels from heaven descend down and give them 75% attendance. If you don’t know who or what I’m talking about, and have some sense of fairness or equity, please take the liberty of looking into it. (When i say "you", I don't specifically mean the author, I am addressing the entire administration, with Prof. Sam Solomon at the center.)
Today, there was an announcement made in the FYUG Notice Board group that students from Economics, Politics, and History could not opt for the MDC courses offered by the Departments of Philosophy and History. Some of us disagreed with this decision, so we came to you to voice our concerns. And in response, you said that we had to compromise on this - stating a lack of faculty, and a lack of courses (contradicting the FYUG regulations, might I add). Now I ask you, why are the students always the ones who have to compromise? When you stand so adamantly against the students on issues that impact us, why do you expect us to come to an understanding? No compromises in the case of attendance, when a student is very ill. A very strict policy against conducting retests, even when there are legitimate reasons, medical or otherwise. Why should we come to terms with a system that, at every step of the way, seems to be against us? You’ve made attendance seem more valuable than gold - like it’s the zenith of academic excellence for a student and any shortcomings are indicative of a poor character and poor capability. While I do agree, to a significant extent that attendance is an important marker for academic growth, bullying students over attendance shortages is not the right way.
ReplyDelete“In such a scenario, is the bell authoritarian? Yes. Is it also necessary? Also yes. The bell is not about infantilizing students—it is about holding the learning environment together in a time where the thin line between freedom and chaos is constantly tested.”
There is a difference between encouragement and policing. We do not need to be infantilized or led like cattle. None of the other top-tier universities in India, or abroad, employ this method, and you can see the results in the fact that they are top-tier. I support making students aware of their individual and collective responsibilities, but it has to stop there. As another commenter put it, you cannot justify the strict schedules as necessary in order to instill "discipline" or "resilience" or "competence". By doing this, you are not helping us. Everything you've mentioned, the bell, the tight class schedule, the attendance, they're enforced with a "school discipline" mindset, (don’t forget the PTA meetings), you are effectively blocking the very skills universities are supposed to develop. You pride yourselves on being the UG Programme at Kerala University, distinct from all the affiliated colleges, and yet you are subjecting the students to the same conditioning they receive in primary school. This IS the reason for so much resentment among the students as a whole towards the entire system - The Director's patronizing attitude towards the students breeds fear of authority and a culture of compliance, not learning. How do we expect our students to reach national excellence, let alone international acclaim, if we continue this method of systematically eroding the university's reputation as a center for higher learning?
“In the end, what do we owe the students?
ReplyDeleteWe owe them:
discipline, not authoritarianism
structure, not rigidity
empathy, not excuses
guidance, not mere instruction
systems that support them, not silence them
Criticism is necessary.
But criticism without responsibility is merely noise.”
I’m not sure what you meant by “Criticism is necessary, but criticism without responsibility is merely noise.” If you meant that students have to carry out their listed responsibilities before criticizing anyone, that is a very outdated and conservative viewpoint that has been historically used to deflect criticisms made against those in power. But since you brought up the topic of responsibility, let us talk about it. When you say “Sam Sir, for all the strong opinions people have about him, stands at the center of this storm and continues to work relentlessly—often invisibly—for students who will never fully know how much their education depends on the system he holds together.”, I do partially agree with you, since he is the director at the end of the day and he is responsible for the initial planning and implementation of the FYUG Programme, and i give him due credit for that. But if he is responsible for all the good that has come out of the FYUG, then he has to be equally held accountable for all its pitfalls. But all the talk around responsibility seems to vanish into thin air whenever you bring this up. The most obvious failure in responsibility towards the students is the delay in publishing the results - we are currently in the fourth semester, and we still haven’t gotten our second semester result sheet yet. Time and again I hear from some students and faculty that we are "a notch above" all the affiliated colleges, but that is apparently a lie since they have their scorecards and we do not.
A very common talking point for those who choose to ignore all the issues I’ve detailed in this reply and focus on the “good” is to say, “We have to respect him - He’s the director, he manages and controls everything, and he’s got the weight of the entire FYUG on his shoulders.” This is a very misguided viewpoint, and it is similar in cause and effect to how the media sensationalizes certain things that should not ever be sensationalized. I see this statement - that “he’s got the entire weight of the FYUG on his shoulders”, as yet another failure of the system. Autocracy does not work. By suppressing dissent and inhibiting freedom of speech and expression, you nip creativity in the bud and build a pipeline to fascism. You may get some results in the short term, and you may again applaud yourselves - but recognize the fact that it will have significant negative effects on the students and faculty in the long term. Prof. Sam Solomon, at present, is no visionary; nor is he a legend.
Sincerely,
A concerned FYUG Student.