After a lot of waits, the University Grants Commission (UGC) released the revised guidelines. The commission instructed universities to conduct the final-year end-semester examinations by September, 2020 amid the pandemic. However, UGC’s decision to continue conducting the examinations did not go well with the students who have been campaigning online to cancel this year’s examinations. #StudentsLivesMatter is now running as one of the top trending hashtags on Twitter. With the help of tweets, unhappy students are expressing their displeasure of UGC’s revised guidelines. Twitter is flooded with reactions displaying students and their concerned parents’ anger over the university guidelines during the pandemic.

Since last month, students have been campaigning online, urging the government to hear their plea and cancel conducting the exams. The National Testing Agency (NTA) as well postponed their annual entrance exams—JEE Main, JEE Advanced and NEET 2020. Again, the Institute of Chartered Accountancy of India (ICAI) as well cancelled their May 2020 CA exams and merged it with November, 2020 attempt. Maharashtra government as well decided to cancel the university exams.

But UGC’s latest guidelines is the decision against scrapping exams for graduating students. The guidelines were preceded by the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) notification allowing universities to conduct examinations even when the positive cases of coronavirus are rising each day in the nation. To display their displeasure with the decision, students are now trending #StudentsLivesMatter. The tweets express students’ present situation, soon after the release of UGC guidelines.

#StudentsLivesMatter Trends on Twitter

Students Are Scared!

They Want All Exams to be Cancelled

Students Question the Mode of Decision Making

COVID-19 Cases Are Increasing Every Day

Stay Home, Stay Safe?

The reason students have been campaigning online against conducting exams was because of the rising cases of coronavirus. As per the candidates, they feel that appearing in the examinations will increase their risk of contracting COVID-19. This is also the reason, why they chose #StudentsLivesMatter as one of the trends to express their disagreement of UGC’s guidelines that instructs universities to conduct the examinations.

(The above story first appeared on LatestLY on Jul 07, 2020 12:57 PM IST. For more news and updates on politics, world, sports, entertainment and lifestyle, log on to our website latestly.com).