admin – Page 4 – The LUMS Post

19Jan

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Campus News

M-5 Converted to a Female Dorm

By Menahel KhanOn December 10, 2020, a wave of happiness ran through the student body of LUMS as they received the much dreamed-for email by the OSA Dean Adnan Khan about housing on campus. With a reassurance of calling everyone back on campus as long as the government orders stay in favor, the Dean OSA also raised the major issue of accommodating the hostelites while remaining COVID compliant. Preference has been given to the female student body and hence, the Junior and Graduate male batches have been relocated to Askari XI. This is done in light of accommodating the female students in M5 as no more than two residents are allowed per room. All hostel facilities with a 3-time-a-day shuttle service, no curfews, and 24/7 access to the campus is being provided to the relocated students. Host...

When Grief is A Bureaucratic Process: Strengthening Support Systems for Students During COVID-19

29Dec

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Editorial, Op-ed

When Grief is A Bureaucratic Process: Strengthening Support Systems for Students During COVID-19

Petitions, Prayers, & Obituary Emails Written & illustrated by Maira Asaad ‘21With words from Amina Omar ‘22 & Mahrukh Murad ‘24The pandemic has, in many ways, changed the way we’re able to mourn the loss of our loved ones, and what the grieving process looks like; the global community is still registering how the social fabric has been altered by a year saturated with losses. As we approach a hybrid Spring semester, it’s important to reflect on how our education system can continue to expand and strengthen its available support mechanisms for its community.The changing faces of grief in 2020In late November, I attended the funeral of an extended family member who had passed away. It wasn't until I arrived at the funeral home did the full weight of the pandemic sink in: wh...

10Dec

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Arts & Culture

Writer’s Block

By Maryam Narejo To paint a picture, it’s a pleasant Sunday morning and you have an assignment due in a couple of days. You sit down on your desk, open your laptop to write your essay, and before you know it an hour goes by while your fingers hover over the keyboard. You are contemplating what to write while self-doubt slowly creeps into your thoughts. As terrifying as this scenario sounds for a creative writer, it has become all too familiar in an online semester. Writer’s blocks occur when a writer feels truly stuck and cannot continue their work. They have several causes such as stress, pressure, anxiety, burn out etc.One reason a blank page can often seem intimidating is exhaustion. When the mind is tired due to overwork, one can get caught up in the details and end up procrastinating ...

Towards Egalitarian Interpretations: “The Quran, Gender Roles and Patriarchy” with Asma Barlas and LRS

20Nov

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Campus News

Towards Egalitarian Interpretations: “The Quran, Gender Roles and Patriarchy” with Asma Barlas and LRS

By Hajrah Yousaf Select events in the past have put The LUMS Religious Society (LRS) into the center of controversy; LRS cannot entirely control what a speaker says, and oftentimes given the profile of their speakers, some talks can turn out to be, and have been in the past, controversial. Moreover, a lot of the events held by the Masjid at LUMS are misattributed to LRS, and any negative reception of them gets projected onto the society. However, this semester, LRS is proud to have hosted an event titled “The Quran, Gender Roles and Patriarchy” with the esteemed academic, Asma Barlas. The talk took place on 14th November and was, according to LRS Vice President Zainab Farooq ‘21, the most attended event by LRS this semester. When the organisers reached out to Dr Barlas early in September 2...

5Nov

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Features

Rebuilding LUMS from memory, block by block

By Mohammad Basit KhanHow the O’Week Co-ordinating Committee brought the campus experience to first yearsHow can a proper welcome to university with all its vibrant culture be emulated online, a space that has become infamous among 2020’s students for bleak interactions through LCD screens? Being on campus is itself a rite of passage, but what alternative could possibly inspire the same feeling with a new batch of students who have never stepped foot on campus grounds? As the 2020 LUMS O-week Co-ordinating Committee came together in late May, the prospective juniors and seniors quickly realised that they might have to completely reinvent the wheel in preparation for a fully online fall.Madeeha Akbar ‘22, Junior Coordinator and friends, Ahmed Farid Khan ‘21 and Saad Siddiqui ’21 were lookin...

Here Lies Hair: Three Accounts of Trichotillomania

18Oct

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Op-ed

Here Lies Hair: Three Accounts of Trichotillomania

A View into Life with a Hair Pulling DisorderBy Syeda Aiman Zehra TW: Trichotillomania, Dermatillomania I haven’t been to the parlor for a haircut since 2018. In 2017, I stopped braiding my hair—and I love braids. My mother gave up trying to convince me to let her oil my hair about a year and a half ago. When I entered LUMS, I ended my relationship with performance arts that spanned years of acting or dancing lead roles. Now, with every passing day, I have started saying more no’s than yes’s to opportunities to leave my house and I have come to equally dread the one thing I desire most: coming back to campus.All of these choices have been solely dictated by an avoidance of overt exposure or movement of my hair. This obsessive behavior started around grade...

Play, Plague, and Public Hate: On Fawad Khan’s “Light’s Out”

4Oct

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Arts & Culture

Play, Plague, and Public Hate: On Fawad Khan’s “Light’s Out”

By: Muhammad Hammad Bilal‘Lights Out’ is a lyric piece written by Manjula Padmanabhan, and directed by Fawad Khan into a comic-ironic exposition of the clash between absurdity and reality. In the play, a married couple tries to physically stage the misgivings, isolation, fetishes, and criminal thoughts lurking in the perceived normalcy of the middle class. It is jolting in its familiarity. ‘Lights Out’ revolves around a couple which, while entertaining guests in their apartment, is witness to a crime taking place outside their household. Wife Laila (played by Kiran Siddiqui), and husband Rahat (played by Ghazi) go berserk as the virtuous and obedient wife screams at her husband to call the authorities to deal with the scenes of brutality playing off-stage. Rahat and Laila’s frenzied exchan...

Setting Examples for Empathetic Teaching in the Virtual Classroom

18Sep

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Features

Setting Examples for Empathetic Teaching in the Virtual Classroom

By Syeda Aiman Zehra When the pandemic forced classes to go online, Maha Zainab Saeed ‘22 found herself in a crisis. A family member was battling cancer. Her work life included two stressful jobs. Her courses were approaching exam season and here was a 2000 word “Anthropology of Energy” midterm paper that asked for her undivided attention. “I was about to have a nervous breakdown,” Saeed told The Post. She approached her instructor, Professor Priya Sajjad, who immediately set up a Zoom call to hear her troubles. Saeed expressed gratitude at this response: “Would you believe it? She divided those 2000 words by 5 and asked me to send a part every day for feedback… So every day, I would take out 15 minutes just to write that small part.” Saeed’s experience is one of many unique student strugg...

3Sep

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Features, Investigative

Save me from that probation

By: Menahel Ayyaz KhanTime and tide are not in today’s generation’s favor. In this fast-paced world where nearly every millennial is a tech savvy, rat-racing his/her way through to achieve whatever goals he/she may have set for him/herself, there is a growing anxiety and sense of being lost. If we narrow this anxiety and confusion down to the life at LUMS, we will unfortunately find nearly the entire student body trying to muscle their way to a high GPA. But not all amongst us are aiming for that. Some are just struggling every day to get by, to get just enough of that excruciatingly difficult GPA to stay enrolled in the program. For some of us, saving ourselves from that mentally torturous probation is the prime and only goal. On my search to find a suitable source for this piece, I came ...

3Sep

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Editorial, Op-ed

Mental Health

By Aiman Zehra and Mohammad Basit KhanUniversity is a jumping-off point for many: a sudden, sometimes unwelcome, crossover to an age where protective veils are lifted and responsibilities are attached. The campus, hence, boasts a counselling system put in place for struggling students. But, is it a relief in this stress-induced environment or an added factor?Student grievances right now revolve around the lack of quick availability of counsellors. We realise the difficulty in entertaining requests from large batches of students, larger still during exam season, but it is important to remember that taking the decision to involve a stranger in one’s personal life is taxing in itself. From there on, the road should be an easier one. We therefore urge the counselling office to make greater ava...