Sunday, July 21, 2019

Welcome address during Valedictory Session by Prof. (Dr.) Sarfaraz Ahmed Khan, Director SLSH, on 6th July, 2019.


Welcome Address by Prof. (Dr.) Sarfaraz Ahmed Khan

A very warm good morning to everyone! We are honoured to have eminent personalities on the dice today with us. We welcome our Chief Guest, Hon'ble Justice G. R. Swaminathan, Judge, Madurai Bench of Madras High Court. We are grateful to you sir for accepting our invitation and decided to devote your time for giving your valuable advice to  our new students. We welcome you, at SLSH.

We welcome our Guest of Honour, Mr. Abhishek Tripathy, IRS, Government of India! We are privileged to not only having him here but also for a workshop for our students post lunch. We extend our warn welcome to you, at SLSH.

We have our Special Guest Ms. Debolina Saha, Senior Associate  Key member of Doresey and Whitney’s, Hong Kong. It is our immense pleasure to have your presence, amongst us today! We welcome you, at SLSH.

We have  Prof.(Dr) Vijender Kumar, VC-NLU, Nagpur, who took time from his busy schedule to grace this function. We are grateful to you sir for agreeing to come here and advise our students for their new journey. We welcome you, to SLSH.

I also welcome our Deputy Director Dr. Anuratha Binnuri, students, teaching and non-teaching faculty members, for the Valedictory function of the 2019-Induction program. 

The 5-day induction program for the batch of 2019-24 began as a huge number of parents, teaching and non-teaching staff gathered here on Monday. A short film on the idea of Symbiosis was screened. The film highlighted how
Prof. Dr. S.B. Mujumdar conceived the idea of establishing an international university after seeing the plight of international students in India. 
In the inauguration session, the students had the opportunity to hear from three eminent stalwarts Hon'ble  Justice B Sudarshan Reddy, Former Judge, Supreme Court of India, Vice Chancellor of National Law School of India University, Bangalore, Prof. Dr. R. Venkata Rao, and Retd. IPS officer, Dr. P.M. Nair. They congratulated students, shared their inspiring life stories and advised for their future pursuit. Their experiences and insights from their works have enlightened all of us with the importance of legal education and learning values in order to attain social justice.

Post lunch, while the students took part in the ice-breaking session, the parents attended a workshop in the convention hall. The new batch mingled with each other during the ice-breaking session and got to know their classmates. Symbiosis Centre for Emotional Wellbeing (SCEW) provided the workshop for the parents on "Raising Respectful, Responsible, and Resilient Children in Today's World". This is an initiative of Symbiosis International University that caters to the emotional well-being of students and staff. A team of qualified and experienced psychologists interacted with the parents on how they can play a very supportive role in developing the emotional resilience of their children. 

In the evening, the mentor-mentee program was conducted. All the teachers have to be available to their students to sort out any problems, be it academic or otherwise. The purpose of this program is to make the students understand that our faculty members are approachable and helpful for them. Each faculty members became mentors for 18 students. Similarly, we also assigned one senior batch students among the toppers as a mentor for every six freshers. The program was a grand success with each faculty members interacting with a group of their mentees in a very amicable way. We want to assure that the new students feel welcomed and knew whom to go to if they have any problems on the campus.
In the next couple of days, presentations on various cells and centers' activities were given. We had a total of 31 presentations from all centers such as Moot Court Association, Training and Placement Cell, International Cell, Center for Legal Aid, and so on. Students and their faculty in-charge briefed the freshers on their aim, objectives, activities, and their forthcoming programs. This session let the students understand the diversity of academic activities carried out on the campus. Now, it is their time to decide which center they want to get associated with.

 We also had a session on Symbicare focussing on health, sports activities, and general well-being of the students in the residential campus. A detailed session on examination rules and academic progression were conducted by Dr. Srinivas Bandameedi. We had members from the IT and Library department demonstrating students on how to use Internet facilities and access online resources.

We were delighted to have our student alumni, Namrata Chakraborthy and Nalamalpu Pavan Krishna Reddy, sharing their experience studying at Symbiosis Law School, Hyderabad, for five years and getting placed in their current organizations.

Stepping into the important phase of their lives, students need to understand the gender differences and that SLS-H places great importance on its zero-tolerance policy about sexual harassment. Therefore, we organized 'Gender Sensitization Program' with the best available resource persons, Prof. (Dr).Rekha Pande, Director, Centre for Women Studies, University of Hyderabad and Dr. Swetha Luthra, Legal Consultant at Support Against Sexual Harassment (SASHA), a well known NGO working on the issues relating to sexual harassment at workplace. It was a very lively and interactive session. 

We made sure that every day of the first four days ended with sports and cultural events where students can get to know each other of their talents. The fifth day was full of fun as all students with faculty members went for an outing in an amusement park (Wonderla).

We tried to ensure that the week-long induction program for the batch of 2019-24 had a mixture of serious academic activities to most jovial cultural programs. We hope these days were very informational, eventful and unforgettable.  

Dear students, the next five years requires your focus on balancing studies and healthy life. From Monday next week, all your classes will begin and it would be the time to get serious, work hard, and excel in your academics while maintaining discipline throughout. If you can achieve this, believe me, many of you can, rather shall, become Judges, solicitor general, advocate general, renowned lawyers, erudite academicians, entrepreneur, or excel at any career of your choice. With a note of caution, if you do not do this, success will remain a distant dream.

Dear students, the only ‘mantra’ that can lead you to your goal is your tenacity to do the ‘hard work’. So, work hard, work hard and work hard!

Thank you! All the Best!

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