It began with something as absurdly silly as a spit. A City University student allegedly spat on a Daffodil International University student in Birulia Union, Savar, on Sunday, October 26. What should have ended in an apology turned into an inferno. That one silly incident overnight destroyed classrooms, torched vehicles, left a private university in ruins and injured more than 200.
By dawn, City University had lost more than Tk 30 crore in property. Office computers, important documents and even the canteen lay in ashes. Young men who came to learn ended up looting, burning and breaking the very spaces built to secure their futures.
The Vice-Chancellor of City University, Md Lutfor Rahman, could only watch in disbelief. “We don’t want to lodge cases,” he said later. “We want to resolve this through the administrative channel.” It was a statement that sounded more like exhaustion than diplomacy.
Daffodil authorities, to their credit, visited the campus the next morning and promised to pay for the damages. But can money rebuild what has already been shattered? It’s about trust, discipline and the sanctity of education itself.
This was not the first time student rivalries in Dhaka spiralled into chaos. In the 1990s and 2000s, clashes between Dhaka University and Dhaka College students were common, often triggered by petty ego battles or political allegiances. Later, similar confrontations erupted between Dhaka College and City College students, sometimes spilling into the streets of Science Laboratory or Nilkhet.
Over time, the names have changed to City, Daffodil, Green, Eastern, but the pattern remains. The institutions, despite new glass facades and glossy brochures, carry an old disease: a lack of accountability.
There was a time when student politics in Bangladesh symbolised courage. It was a force that fought for freedom and justice. Now, it too often stands for intolerance, turf wars and social media-fuelled ego. Many of today’s students have grown up in a culture where aggression is rewarded and apologies are often seen as weakness. Universities, meanwhile, have been too busy expanding campuses and increasing enrolment to pay attention to something far more vital: the behavioural guidance.
The tragedy of City University is not just about a vandalised campus; it is about moral decay. About a generation that has learned how to fight but forgotten how to disagree. A generation more fluent in outrage than empathy.
Sociologists have long warned of this shift. The digital generation, raised on the immediacy of likes and comments, often struggles with patience, dialogue and self-restraint. Add to that the absence of effective counselling or disciplinary systems in most private universities, and you get campuses ready to explode at the smallest provocation.
Today, classes and exams remain suspended at both City and Daffodil universities. Dormitories have emptied as frightened students pack their bags and flee. The silence that hangs over the campuses is heavy, as if the buildings themselves are grieving.
This is not just another “campus clash.” It’s a mirror held up to a nation’s youth, showing what happens when education loses its soul. When respect is replaced by rage. When the future, once bright with promise, burns in the fires of pride and impulsiveness.
The ruins of City University should not be seen as a failure of a few students. It is the failure of all of us. Educators, parents, institutions and the nation itself, who forgot to teach the hardest lesson of all: how to be human in moments of anger.
