With Oasis ’25 approaching, the Oasis English Press sat down with Pranav Arya Sunku, the Coordinator of the Safety & Medical Advisory Council (SMAC), to learn more about the functioning of the council during Oasis. Introducing the student body, Pranav said that SMAC takes care of medical assistance during the fest, handling paramedics, ambulances, and all general medical inventory required. They cover all medical situations from simple first-aid to serious injuries needing the patient to be transported to a hospital.
Arya said that SMAC aims to further reduce its response time to incidents. To do its work, the club has taken multiple permissions from the SWD and the CMO. They arranged for the paramedics by reaching out, receiving multiple quotes, and sorting through them, depending on the budget provided to them by the Corroboration and Review Committee.
As a Coordinator, Arya said that his duties were to arrange all relevant permissions from the administrative and legal authorities, and make sure that everything was readily available for the juniors, so that they could handle things on time and be empowered to handle situations without being questioned.
He said that the medical cases they received during Oasis were unique, mainly due to incidents during concerts, exhaustion, and not taking meals on time. He recalled that after a fight during a concert, they were approached by a person who said that he did not remember who he was.
He said that letting outsiders know about their services is a little tricky. They put the club’s contact on their IDs and on the posters in common rooms.
The club trained its juniors by going through the list of events and teaching them first aid for the injuries anticipated in each event. This time, it also tried to train them by organising a first aid camp.
Arya hoped that everyone would have fun during the fest and remain safe while partaking of said fun. He noted the student’s inclination towards overestimating the energy of the body, a mistake that he said would hit all too suddenly. He requested everybody to take care of their health, and ended by reassuring the GBM that they were ‘always there to take care of you.’