Subject: Regarding my proposal for Gymkhana Blues/Gymkhana Faculty Award From: "Anurag Sahay" Date: 07-04-2016 02:32 To: chair_ss@iitk.ac.in Dear Vedant, Pursuant to the proposals I sent to you before, I would like to amend the proposal to include the following points as well, * The Gymkhana Awards were instituted in 2011, before then the Gymkhana Blues did not exist. However, the Students' Gymkhana has existed for ~50 years before the institution of this award. As a consequence, a number of alumni who could have gotten the award had it existed earlier have not gotten such recognition. I propose that for the first year in which the award is given to alumni (that is, the next Gymkhana Year), the award should not be limited to alumni who have graduated in the past 3 years, but instead should be open to all alumni. Furthermore, for this year, the Senate should relax its general concern about awarding more than one Blues, and should award as many Blues as it deems necessary. However, the award should be given only on the basis of contributions made during their stay(s) as a student, and not on their contributions to the Gymkhana post graduation. As a working example, Prof. A.K. Ghosh, former Dean, Students' Affairs is an alumnus of IITK. If he is to be given the award, it should be given on the basis of his stay as a student, and not due to his tenure as Chief Counsellor. For subsequent years, we should go back to the 3 years graduation rule. * At present, the panel for Gymkhana Blues is unique - it is the only committee whose convener is not the President, and which, in fact, does not have any officebearer as a member. This was because, in this situation, officebearers are viable candidates for the award, and we did not want a candidate to miss out on the award because he was made a member of the panel ex-officio. However, if we change the eligibility to alumni, the current President and Chairperson will no longer be eligible for the award, and hence it makes sense to add them both to the committee. However, we do not want to upset the current balance of the committee with respect to number of batches represented, and hence I am recommending that the size of the committee be increased from 7 to 9. Thus, I am proposing the following committee: 1. President, Students' Gymkhana (Convener) 2. Chairperson, Students' Senate 3. One UG Senator, nominated by the Students' Senate 4. One PG Senator, nominated by the Students' Senate 5. 5 General Body Members, nominated by the Students' Senate Furthermore, as is the case right now, as many batches should be represented in the committee as possible. * If we change the award, we shall also have to change the nomination process. At present, there is no process for nomination - it is expected that if a candidate deserves Gymkhana Blues, he/she will already be so famous that he/she will be known to the panel. However, we allow Senators and General Body Members to send their recommendations to the panel for its consideration. In my opinion, it is no longer reasonable to expect that the panel will necessarily know all the candidates who can reasonably be considered for the award, as some of them might have graduated before the students in the panel had even become students of IIT Kanpur. As a consequence, I propose that from now on, the panel shall invite informal nominations from the General Body as well as from the faculty and alumni of the Institute. There will be no need to fill a nomination form - we will merely expect the nominator to explain why he is nominating whoever he/she nominates, as well as who they are, what their connection to the nominee is, and what their involvement with the Gymkhana has been in the past. From these nominations, as well as other names considered suo moto, the panel may then do an in-depth investigation of the eligibility and suitability of each candidate and correspondingly come up with a recommendation. * To facilitate the panel knowing more about recent alumni, it is further proposed that two to three alumni be made special invitees to the panels with no votes. These alumni may participate in the panel's discussion through physical presence, telephonic conversation or skype, whichever is convenient, and will give the committee the desired perspective regarding the candidates. I further suggest that all of these alumni should be former officebearers and General Body Members who are ineligible or not considered for the award and yet have a great knowledge about the Gymkhana. In particular, I suggest that former awardees of the Gymkhana Blues should be the most preferable alumni for being special invitees, followed by officebearers who are no longer eligible due to the passage of time. * As above, I think it is important for the Gymkhana Faculty award to also have input from alumni, as current students have a limited perspective on the impact of a particular faculty member on the Gymkhana and the student community. This may be achieved by a similar nomination process where any General Body Member or alumnus may recommend the name of a current or former Faculty member of IIT Kanpur, and further by including two to three alumni as special invitees to the committee. These alumni need not be officebearers or Blues awardees. I request that the above also be placed before the Senate in the meeting today. Sincerely, Anurag -- Anurag Sahay 5th Year, BS-MS Dual Degree Dept. of Mathematics and Statistics IIT Kanpur