SUC Report Card(2022-23): Shikhar Gupta

A campus culture restored to its thriving and lively pre-pandemic glory was the main vision of Cultural Secretary (Boys) Shikar Gupta during the 21-22 Student Union Council elections. Looking back at his manifesto, as of April 2023, out of the 10 points in his manifesto, 6/10 are fulfilled, 2/10 are in progress, and 2/10 are unfulfilled. Here’s the link to the manifesto.

Revival:

1. Sanskriti (Fulfilled)

A pre-pandemic campus tradition was finally brought back as Sanskriti, described as a cultural night wherein different Regional Associations performed their acts, which was successfully carried out during October ’22, along with the presence of food trucks during the weekend.

2. Renaissance (Fulfilled)

The cultural equivalent of the Inter-Bhavan Sports competition, Renaissance took place in April, with different clubs hosting events and competitions. The only downside to this is that it’s happening a bit too late into the semester, with most of the GB preoccupied with the final stretch of evals before the Compre exams, and the 22 batch with midsems, thus leading to the event having to take a bit of a back seat, lacking the enthusiastic participation and attention it deserved.

3. Moonlight Dinner (Fulfilled)

Described as an open dinner on the Old Football grounds involving both faculty and students, this event which is another pre-pandemic relic of our campus culture, took place towards the very end of Shikhar’s tenure.

4. Pearl Ball (Unfulfilled)

As described in the manifesto, Pear Ball is a night of music, dance and food, serving as a teaser to our main cultural fest, Pearl. However, due to last-minute budget cuts due to zero deductions, it was simply not possible to make this event happen before Pearl.

Promotion and Preservation

1. Food Fest (Fulfilled)

The food fest was initiated to display regional diversity on our campus by bringing food trucks to campus from outside. It manifested in a different format than originally imagined: it took place multiple times for various cultural events hosted on the campus in the form of food trucks.

2. Monthly Cultural Nights (Fulfilled)

Almost every month through his tenure had a steady flow of cultural events.

3. Inclusivity in art: Regional movie screenings (Fulfilled)

In order to encourage and build admiration among different cultures in BITS, regional movie screenings were proposed to be conducted. These screenings were done all year round in the classrooms and auditorium featuring movies of various languages in Telugu, Tamil, and Odia, to name a few.

4. Workshops (In progress)

With the intention of letting interested members know more about the happenings of clubs, the idea of conducting workshops was promoted. However, some clubs followed through with this, and some did not.

5. Inclusion of enthusiasts (In progress)

Suggestions were given to clubs to implement this, but since complete control was not under Shikhar, some clubs which were for the idea executed it, and those which were against, did not.

6. Intercollege competitions (Unfulfilled)

There were fests conducted by some colleges, such as IIITH, IITH and Osmania University, the number of participants was less, and they faced some issues with travel. There were intercollege competitions but not as many as there could have been. One of the reasons stated was the negative state of the budget: the 4.5 lakhs that were meant to be allotted to the cultural senate was not made accessible to them.