Concerning the student involved in misconduct at our university

Concerning the student involved in misconduct at
our university
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Professor Ko Huei-chen
Office of Student Affairs
Dean of Student Affairs
National Cheng Kung University
Tainan, Taiwan
(06) 2757575-50300

Dear Dean Ko,

Please understand I am asking you to call student CHEN
into
your office. She wrote a secret letter in 1999, which was
clearly
spiteful and malicious. She complained of a grade EIGHT
YEARS after she
received it. She has not been punished.
Your reference to a "grandfather" clause is absurd, since
the
university delayed handling this case for years when most
universities
in the world would have called this student in within a few
days. You
yourself talked for months, if not years, about "gathering
evidence" and
"investigating" when most officials would have picked up
the phone in a
couple of hours to call the student into the office simply
on the basis
that a professor asked her to. Isn't a request from a
faculty member
good enough for you? We're talking about student
misconduct; your job
is to set standards for conduct. That's the whole point of
having an
Office of Student Affairs. The issues are plain and will
not disappear
because you wish them to:
First, a university official solicited this letter in 1999,
the
morning of my "review" meeting. The student herself said
so.
Second, the letter was secretly circulated at committee
hearings
chaired by former Dean Tu of the College of Liberal Arts
and former
dean, Lee Chen-er, who chaired university committees that
voted my
dismissal,at least partly based on that letter.
Third, the student has shown no regret over her conduct and
defended her letter to James Tsai, who, for more than a
year, gave me
every excuse for not doing anything, before he resigned due
to a
scandal. I don't understand what you mean by you have no
proof the
student repeated her claim. Professor Tsai said so. Ask
him. I'm not
going to waste my time asking him. That's your job.
Besides, I thought
you were "gathering evidence" the two years you were
handling this case?
Finally, your remark about the email being unsigned makes
no
sense. It was submitted as evidence to a court. What more
do you want?
But none of these issues matter. Since when is a university
a
court of law? We're not dealing with criminal statutes
here, we're
dealing with student misconduct. Your job is to respond to
complaints
from faculty about students.
Besides, why do university officials invoke laws to protect
a
student while defying every law in Taiwan to persecute
foreign faculty?
Is this your idea of advanced ethical principles at our
university? I'm
curious if you think so. When you taught in America, did
faculty accept
secret accusations against you from students?
Recently I was informed that an official at a university
meeting
attempted to repeal a law that would punish students for
misconduct. If
this is true, it shows the direction in which our
university is headed.
Why would an official of our university argue to annul a
law protecting
teachers from misconduct by students?
Regardless, I regret to inform you that no American
professor will
be discredited at our university without punishment of
those involved,
whether officials or students. Please be assured that Ms.
Chen An-chuen
will be punished for her misconduct, but so will officials
involved in
the solicitation and circulation of her letter.
The longer this case continues, the more difficult it will
be for
the university to redeem itself at its conclusion. This is
a
responsibility that you and other
officials involved in this case must bear.
And please make no mistake about it, but I will make very
clear to
students that I did everything reasonably possible to
resolve these
issues with minimal damage to the university. The evidence,
now
spanning more than four years, will support me, rather than
officials
defying laws and due process of law.

Sincerely,

Professor Richard de Canio
Department of Foreign Languages and Literature
National Cheng Kung University
Tainan, Taiwan