COMMITTEE FOR PROTECTING AMERICAN COLLEGE LAUNCHED

The New Indian Express dated 22-03-2011

AN Action Committee for Protecting American College Constitution (ACPAC) was launched here on Monday.

Addressing the media, Prabakar Vedamanickam, Joint Secretary of ACPAC said that it will be an association of individuals who are stake-holders in the well being of the American College. The membership is open to serving faculty, non teaching staff, retired faculty and alumni.

However, illustrious members of the civil society committed to educational cause will be nominated to its executive body. The membership was not open to current students of the college, he said.

The committee has been formed to defeat the criminal machinations of th CSI Bishop, Christopher Asir who was trying to usurp the institution and appropriate its invaluable property.

Though being a Christian institution, American College was not a chruch owned institution and it had an independent constitutional standing as a registered society.

Bishop and his immediate family members have been using violence and criminal intimidation of well meaning faculty members, planting criminals in the campus and also misguiding students to achieve his end of taking the college into his hands, Prabakar charged.

The Bishop was also constantly involved in abusing the process of law to install illegally his cronies as principals much against the order of the Division Bench of Madras High Court with impunity. In short, a vicious process of commercial and criminal appropreation of this noble institution was in progress. "Further, the Bishop has illegally declared American College as the property of CSI diocese. What was till recently the beacon of higher education in South India is now under the threat of being subjected to the criminal activities of Bishop and his family members", he added.

Over a period of three years, this struggle against the Bishop and his motives has taken shape as a movement to protect the liberal foundation of higher education and fight against all tendencies of commercialisation and criminalisation of education. Unfortunately, this noble aim was caricatured as an ego clash between individuals in position, Prabakar said. In order to avoid this diversionist tactics of the Bishop and his coterie, the broader social cause involved in the present fight was given a formal expression through the constitution of ACPAC, he stated.

The objectives of the committee was to uphold the core values of the constitution of the American College enacted in 1934 and the missionary vision thereof, to defend legally every percept of the constitution of the college with a view to deliver efficient education to students in a liberal Christian context, to take all lawful step to fight against commercialisation and criminal usurping of the college and its estate in the name of religion by Madurai-Ramnad diocese or any other establishment and to take measures to uphold the liberal Christian values and to fight all activities that promote religious violence in the campus.

P T Chellapa, Former Principal of the college has been selected as President and R K Alegesan, Head PG Department of Tamil will be Vice-President. Other office bearers include Winfred Thomas, Associate Professor of the College as Secretary of ACPAC and Prabakar Vedamanickam, Assistant Professor of Tamil and Ramesh, Typist as Joint Secretaries. There were also categories to include present faculty, non-teaching staff, former faculty members, alumni and co-opted positions as office bearers.