Latest news with #Avinav
Time of India
3 days ago
- Politics
- Time of India
Madras High Court stays suspension of student over 'Free Palestine' graffiti
Representative image CHENNAI: Madras HC has stayed the May 25 decision of Rajiv Gandhi National Institute of Youth Development (RGNIYD) in Sriperumbudur to suspend a second-year PG student for defacing hostel property by painting 'Jai Bhim' and 'Free Palestine' graffiti in his hostel room. Justice T V Thamilselvi directed the institute to allow the student and petitioner, S Aslam, to appear in exams and take part in the internship programme. "If he is not permitted to attend the examination and internship programme, it will cause undue hardship to the petitioner," the court said in its interim order on Thursday. RGNIYD's assistant registrar, Avinav Thakur, the warden, and the assistant warden visited the hostel premises and found Aslam defacing the property with graffiti. An inquiry committee, including Avinav, subsequently suspended Aslam from the institute and expelled him from the hostel. However, Aslam alleged that he was being victimised after he and some other students exposed a pending sexual assault case against Avinav in Jharkhand. He claimed that Avinav influenced the committee and coerced some students to testify against him. The court then adjourned the matter for hearing on June 25.
Boston Globe
27-05-2025
- Boston Globe
To win the Scripps National Spelling Bee, contenders must also master geography
Advertisement Along with SAT-style, multiple-choice vocabulary questions, geographical terms have altered the way spellers prepare for the bee, which began Tuesday and concludes Thursday at a convention center outside Washington. Mastering them can require an out-of-fashion skill: rote memorization. Get Starting Point A guide through the most important stories of the morning, delivered Monday through Friday. Enter Email Sign Up 'Geographical words can be super hard sometimes because there's no roots to break it down or sometimes you don't get a language of origin. It will say 'unknown origin' or the dictionary doesn't say,' said Avinav Prem Anand, a 14-year-old from Columbus, Ohio, who's competing this year for the fourth and final time. 'Basically, you have to memorize them because that's the only thing you can do.' Avinav put his preparation to use in Tuesday's preliminary rounds when he breezed through Sapporo, the capital of the northern Japanese island of Hokkaido. Others were not so fortunate: 12-year-old Eli Schlosser of Fergus Falls, Minnesota, heard the dreaded bell because he was unfamiliar with Terre Haute, the western Indiana city. He went with 'terrahote.' Advertisement Last year, the Randhawa family of Corona, California, saw its decade-long spelling journey end when Avi misspelled Abitibi, the name of a shallow lake in northeastern Ontario and western Quebec. 'It's beyond the pale of what anybody would consider a reasonable geographical word, a small lake in Canada that not even my Canadian friends had heard of. Not even a top-50 size lake in Canada,' Rudveep Randhawa said. 'It's just bizarre. In all the years with geographical words, we had seen words of some significance, they may be capitals of smaller countries, or they may be some port city that had significance, things of that nature.' Yet for those who might find geographical terms unfair, Scripps has a message: Study harder. 'Per our contest rules, all words listed in Merriam-Webster Unabridged Online, except those that are labeled 'archaic' or 'obsolete,' are fair,' said Molly Becker, the editorial director at Cincinnati-based Scripps and a member of the panel that selects words for the competition. Scripps considers encouraging intellectual curiosity as part of the bee's mission, and if kids with designs on the trophy have to learn more geography in order to prepare, that's arguably a good thing. 'You never know what word will stand out to a speller and spark a lifelong interest or introduce them to a new concept,' Becker said. Longtime spelling coach Grace Walters, a graduate student in linguistics at the University of Kentucky, cringed at the memory of Abitibi. 'Geo is definitely something that is feared by spellers,' Walters said, calling it 'a daunting task to study.' Advertisement 'But if geo is unfair because it doesn't have patterns, that would mean other categories like trademarks and personal eponyms and words of unknown origin would also be unfair,' she said. Some spellers embrace the challenge. Faizan Zaki, last year's runner-up who's competing again this year, was thrilled to hear Abitibi and Hoofddorp — a town in the Netherlands — in 2024 because he had seen those words before. 'There's actually a section in Merriam-Webster that is dedicated to just geographical words, so sometimes when I'm tired from studying normal words, I take a break and I browse through that list of geographical words that they have,' said Faizan, a 13-year-old from Allen, Texas. You heard that right: When Faizan gets tired of studying, he 'takes a break' by studying more. 'Pretty much, that's my life,' he said. 'But yeah, it's definitely enjoyable. I don't hate it or anything.'
