Regarding administrative problems at National Cheng Kung University

5/25/2004 11:44 AM
Subject: Regarding administrative problems at National Cheng Kung
UniversityBCC: editor@it.chinatimes.com.tw, edop@etaiwannews.com,
editor@etaiwannews.com, info@chinapost.com.tw,
info@taipeitimes.com, letters@taipeitimes.com

Ministry of Education
Minister of Education,
Mr. Cheng-sheng Du

23 May 2004

Dear Minister Du,

Congratulations on your appointment. Yet I wish to take this
occasion to advise you of a serious lack of moral
leadership at National Cheng Kung University, in Tainan.
The president of the university, Kao Chiang, has repeatedly defied
Ministry rulings. It took him more than two years to
comply with a legal Ministry of Education Appeals decision, dated 8
January 2001. Not until May in 2003, after the
Ministry sent eight warning letters, did President Kao comply with that
ruling, and only partly. For he still defies the legal
benefits of that ruling, contesting my right to compensation and full
back pay as well as an apology.
In a democracy, the law is routine. Yet President Kao and his
lawyers want to "arbitrate" every legal rulng. National
Cheng Kung University cannot advance as an academic institution using
arbitration, like it was a small private business. A
university must rely on a fully rationalized legal system, where private
prejudices and personal emotions have no place. This
is why we say that democracy is a government of laws, not men (or
people).
This doesn't even touch on moral, apart from legal, issues. Who in
the academic community, apart from Kao Chiang,
would argue that an appellant who wins an appeal simply gets the right
to appeal again? Apart from legal logic, what kind of
moral logic is this? If this were argued against a Taiwan appellant in
America, there would be outrage in Taiwan over it.
What has happened to the Chinese (indeed, universal) principle of
reciprocity at our university?
A university must have moral leadership to maintain its standing in
the academic community. If the head official of a
university can defy a legal Ministry Appeal ruling, and even use
taxpayers' money to do so, what model of conduct is that for
the younger generation of scholars and students?
In addition, officials have repeatedly failed to respond to
Ministry of Education requests to handle the case of a student
accused of misconduct at our university. Apart from the issue of
compliance, what moral message are we sending the
younger generation when they realize that it's not what you do in life
that counts, but who you know. The message seems to
be that, if an official requests student collaboration in misconduct,
the student is guaranteed protection from punishment in the
future. This produces both a culture of subservience among the weak and
a culture of arrogance among the strong. It
places power and peer pressure above moral principle. These are not
standards a legitimate university should follow.
Therefore I strongly urge you end the moral confusion at our
university and enforce moral principles as well as legal
standards.

Sincerely,

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