AU website, a sad tale of neglect

ALLAHABAD UNIVERSITY'S ride on the fast-track information super highway seems to have gone off-track.

The official website of Allahabad University (AU), www.allduniv.edu, launched amidst much fanfare in 2000—today tells a sad tale of its utter neglect at the hands of the university authorities and whose haphazard collection of outdated and incomplete information has led to its virtual shunning by the IT-savvy student community.

"There is nothing new on the site ever. All information is outdated and thus unreliable. Most links provided on the homepage are either defunct or lead to a page that carries very little information of real use for a student," says Ranjan Mishra, a final year undergrad of AU.

"Even information about admissions and courses offered and hostels are incomplete," adds Namita, pursuing her PG from AU.

The complaints seem justified for a visit to the official homepage of the varsity is enough to confirm the apathy of AU officials towards AU's existence in the virtual world.

The link 'Virtual Campus' leads to 'Campus News' that in turns shows five links but all of them are 'dead'. The 'News Archive' section is even worse. Here you are led to 16 links including 'Allahabad University goes online' but none of them takes you anywhere except to a page displaying the error messages.

Same is the state of many other links including 'Check latest university results here', 'Conference', campus calendar, scholarships and the 'Message Board'.

Even the search option provided on the homepage is defunct.

As for information about various faculties and departments of the university, the site is completely unreliable. Information about many a departments like Ancient History, Arabic and Persian (Arts Faculty), Commerce (Commerce Faculty) as well as Biochemistry. Home Science and Botany (Science Faculty) are completely absent. And the lucky ones which do have managed a presence on the website, information provided is not complete.

For example the Chemistry Department page has no links to look for the names of faculty members, research activities and admission details that some of the privileged few have been accorded.

Same is the state of information provided about the hostels. Many like the Diamond Jubilee, International House, Dighambar Jain, Hindu Hostel, Holland Hall, Sarojini Naidu (girls) and Shatabdi (girls) are mentioned but no information given about them. Others are more lucky but there too information like where one should apply for accommodation, the fee and the place to procure the forms are nowhere to be seen.

Details of some courses have been provided on the site under 'Admissions' while many like BFA, MA, MSc, MCom, MBA, MTech, LLB and LLM have been left in the cold.

None of the recent achievements of the varsity, awards won by its faculty members or papers published by them in journals of national and international repute or even the future plans find any mention on the website. The fact that the website is completely silent on the biggest development: AU becoming a Central varsity, sums it all up.

The only new thing on the website is the name of the new administrative staff including the new vice-chancellor, sitting plan for UGC NET Exam and the advertisement for the posts of Registrar and Finance Officer.