Stalkers found in college study groups

KSOU officials scan groups, fix privacy settings after female students start getting unwanted messages

It seems the “Hi’ “Good Morning” “Will you make friendship with me” messages are bleeding into college online groups, meant specifically to send information on classroom assignments. With most universities creating groups on messaging apps to disseminate study materials, girl students are complaining that they’re receiving messages from people whom they don’t know. Some of these are their classmates and others are students in their college.

In Karnataka State Open University (KSOU), which offers distance education courses, girl students have been complaining that they’re receiving festival greetings, chats, requests for notes and other favours.

Initially, it was tough for the Open University to identify which of the students were indulging in cyber bullying. But now, S Vidyashankar, vice-chancellor of KSOU says they’ve figured out a way. “We had to ask students to utilise the security features of the messaging app so that there are no complaints.”

Varsity’s special officer H Rajeshwari Sreenivasa said that they had asked students to check the KSOU websites for study materials, exam circulars and any other official communication. However, when many students said they missed key notifications, the varsity decided to create an official group in the Telegram app. “Once the group was created, many of our girl students started complaining that they were receiving messages from strangers. So, we asked students to change their security settings to make their phone number invisible. Even the group admin won’t be able to see the phone number. Our girl students are happy now. “

One of the students said, “I chose online classes because I was working too. But as soon as I enrolled, I started receiving a lot of messages from strangers. When I tried to block a number, I would get messages from other numbers. I’m glad the varsity took care of this.”

Students from other colleges too have been reporting cases of cyber bullying and stalking. A second year engineering college student said, “I study in an engineering college and receive a lot of messages these days from unknown numbers. Sometimes, these numbers are not just from classmates but from strangers too. Groups which are formed to send classroom assignments to all students are a risk because anyone in the group can send you a message. It’s important that security settings are used to protect one’s identity so that one’s profile picture and number are not visible.”

Meanwhile, Deputy CM Dr CN Ashwath Narayan who also holds the portfolio of higher education has set a target for increasing enrollment in KSOU. “So far, 17,244 students have enrolled in KSOU,” said the Dy CM and added that the open university will get a lot of attention due to the “learn from anywhere “concept and he would like to see this university spreading its wings across the country. By 2022, the number of students in KSOU should cross 50,000 and by 2023, it should have more than one lakh students. “We need to rope in celebrities to promote KSOU in a big way,” he said