If one thinks the title is weird, well then one needs to check the Sunday Leader headlines on the 19th of September 2010. The article speaks of an alleged process by the university authorities which entails female students being sent to hospital for virginity tests!

Three questions that pop up instantaneously in my head : Is this for real? If answer to the previous be in the affirmative, what kind of idiotic behaviour does this amount to? What right does one possess to check whether a student is a virgin or not?

One thing to be noted duly is that this situation which is reported to have occurred according to the above mentionned newspaper does amount to a level of morality being imposed on others. It also in turn, if proved to have happened becomes a demonstration of power vested in the authority ( or the power the individual believes to be vested in him).

The article states : “the girls were talking to boys.., as it often happens in campus life, when they were forcibly put into the campus ambulance by security guards and taken away to the Kalubowila Hospital for a virginity test.”

It is also stated that among other things that this individual of authority has ventured into imposing is intruding on boys and girls in close conversation and forcing their parents to get them “married off”

Is this for real? or is this another article that lacks in accuracy? A question that requires an answer.

If the authority did impose such requirement for the students, then what be the basis? And if he did not, what be the basis for the newspaper to publish such an article accusing the individual of such acts?

Something seems not quite correct either way!

Follow up on the situation

After reading the newspaper article, I asked from a university student who refuses that there has been such situation within the university premises as the Newspaper quotes. She says that there has been no cameras as mentioned in the newspaper article which she has seen.

Hence the next question, are the facts in the article of the Sunday newspaper portraying the reality of the university of Jayawardhanapura or is it merely distorting a situation for some other reason?

What ever it may be, it would be something that needs to be looked at and more information distributed.

Hence the need for me to talk to more people and also observe the accuracy of Sri Lankan newspaper articles that are deemed to be forming and conditioning the public opinion.