Narratives of Dissent and Discontent

University campuses are the world's most socially heterogeneous societies where students, teachers, administrators and parents across diverse regions, religions, races, castes, classes, and different genders interact. Camaraderie between the stakeholders of academia, that is, students-students, faculty-students, faculty-parents, students-administrators develops. This academic kinship is marked by the interference of power where one's position within the institutions of race, caste, class and gender determines the terms of a particular relationship. Relations evolve as "power relations" and the ideological prejudices along with the hierarchical divisions highlighted by the play of power affect the daily life in the campus, charting out the course of action for each and everyone involved. Academy then, is a site of power struggles wherein the hierarchical positions in the university, that is, administrator/ faculty/ student; race/ caste/ class; and gender/ feminism/ alternate sexuality/ masculinity, assume the status of power structures that are maintained through tradition and result in the emergence of "dissent and discontent."