Third Gender Centre at Delhi University struggles to attract aspirants

Even as the Delhi University (DU) wrapped up the registration process for admission in undergraduate courses on Thursday, its newly established 'Third Gender Resource Centre' is still waiting for aspirants to visit. With an aim to give third gender aspirants a platform for dispensing information on higher education, the centre was established much ahead of the beginning of admission process in April.

The University's Department of Adult, Continuing Education, and Extension had earlier decided to organise a special counselling session to take admission-related queries of the third-gender aspirants at the centre. "We are receiving calls from third-gender students with admission-related issues. We ask them to visit us at the centre. But, unfortunately, no one has turned up as of now. They are very hesitant to visit the university," said Dr Rajesh, a professor at the department.

However, the department is now finding other ways to reach out to them.

"We have started visiting the areas where third-gender community resides in the Capital. We generally meet them during their community meetings and discuss the importance of education. It's very important to bring these students into the mainstream education system," he said. It is to be noted that not even a single student from the third gender has enrolled into regular classes across the university ever since the category was added in admission forms in 2015. Every year, DU receives applications from third gender students, but no one joins regular college. They rather prefer DU's School of Open Learning (SOL).

As many as 101 aspirants have applied under the category this time around. "We are trying hard to motivate them to join regular classes. Let's see if things work out," said Dr Rajesh.

Explaining the kind of queries the Resource Center is getting from the aspirants, he said, "Beside admission-related questions, most of them are curious to know about the inclusiveness of the campus towards them. Some transgender students also wanted to know if they can take admission in girls colleges as they will be more comfortable there. However, it won't be possible as per the norms."

 Several third-gender students, enrolled in the distance learning programme, cited lack of inclusiveness as the reason for not opting for regular education. "The university colleges don't even have separate toilets for us. That's the basic facility one can provide," said a final year transgender student at SOL.