Concerning ongoing administrative problems at National Cheng Kung University in Tainan

Subject:
Concerning ongoing administrative problems at National Cheng Kung
University in Tainan
Date:
Sun, 12 Oct 2003 10:53:22 +0800

To:
moe
CC:
eyemail@eyemail.gio.gov.tw, peu03@mail.gio.gov.tw,
mail@mail.moe.gov.tw, vp@mail.oop.gov.tw,
tahr@seed.net.tw, twjrf@seed.net.tw, Control Yuan





Ministry of Education
Department of Higher Education

cc: Office of the Premier, Minister of Education, Control Yuan, Taiwan
Commission on Human Rights, Taiwan Association for Human Rights, The
Judicial Reform Foundation

12 October 2003

Dear Ministry officials:

I am writing this letter because of the unacceptable delay of the
current National Cheng Kung University administration in the handling of
the case of a student engaged in misconduct at our university. I wish
to address several issues that the Ministry should be concerned about:
The first is the unacceptable delay itself. More than two years
have already passed since I first filed a formal complaint with the
Office of Student Affairs, whose current dean is Professor Ko
Huei-chen. Instead of handling the case promptly, the Office of Student
Affairs used every possible excuse to delay handling it. Faculty should
be treated with respect. Administrators are colleagues of faculty, not
guardians. They shouldn't be allowed to decide which matters to pursue
and which to ignore.
Second, excuses used by the Office of Student Affairs, specifically
either by Dean Ko Huei-chen or the former vice-dean, James Tsai, suggest
indifference to the moral and legal issues involved in this case.
One excuse was that the current student was not a student when she
wrote her secret and malicious letter accusing me of unfairly failing
her eight years earlier. But this student's complaint concerned a
teacher-student relationship that is, in its nature, ongoing or
continuous and will remain so until the student leaves the university.
Besides, if a legalistic principle is used to protect the student
today, why wasn't that same principle used to protect the teacher before
the letter was officially accepted and circulated? But this kind of
double-standard is common at our university: ignoring principles
of law to harass a foreign professor but invoking them to prevent him
from obtaining justice.
This is beside the point anyway; since the student repeated her
malicious accusation to the vice-dean following her re-registration
after she wrote her letter. Even if she were not accountable for a
letter she wrote when she was not a student, she is certainly
accountable for repeating the claims in that letter when she was a
student. Apart from protecting the victim of that letter, does the
university wish to advance a public policy of ignoring student
misconduct of such magnitude that it resulted in the dismissal of a
professor?
Similarly, the argument that a court ruling rejected this student's
liability for my dismissal is also irrelevant. Courts are concerned
with crimes, while a school is concerned with misconduct. The fact that
a court dismisses a criminal action against a student for not wearing
her school uniform does not prevent the school from punishing her. A
student may be found innocent of drunk driving but still be punished by
a parent for driving a car without permission or by a school
administrator for being drunk in violation of school codes.
A recent argument presented by the Office of Student Affairs, that
the student's behavior would improve if she were not punished is morally
absurd and reflects the poverty of moral standards at our university. I
can't imagine any moral philosophy that would support such an argument.
A moralist might argue, compassionately, that censure is sufficient,
without punishment. But to translate that to mean that censure is not
necessary at all suggests to me a serious lack of moral principle. If
this is the principle by which our university is governed, it suggests
cause for serious concern.
Apart from these specific isssues, there are more general issues
that the Ministry should be concerned about:
The first is an ongoing university policy of referring to lawyers
instead of to laws. Democracy is a government of laws, not lawyers.
Lawyers, even good lawyers, are not elected or appointed officials and
have no business interfering in the governance of a university. The
policy at our university of constantly referring to "interpretations" of
laws made by so-called lawyers must stop and adminstration returned to
elected or appointed officials and faculty bound by written laws that
are not subject to interpretation. No law subject to interpretation is
a true law in a democratic society. In any case, only the judicial
branch of government is authorized to interpret laws, subject to
constitutional restraints.
This policy of having lawyers determine law at our university is
undermining law under the color of law. This became apparent in the
contempt shown by the university administration following the Ministry
of Education's legal ruling canceling my dismissal in January 2001. For
it took more than two years and countless warning letters issued by the
Ministry of Education before the current president, Kao Chiang finally
accepted that his so-called "interpretation" of the law was in fact
against the law.
A public official who claims the right to "interpret"
the law, whether as a deliberate tactic to obstruct the execution of
justice or from unpardonable ignorance should be promptly dismissed.
Moreover, university lawyers involved in frivolous litigation costing
taxpayers millions of dollars should be dismissed and subject to an
ethics review before a Taiwan bar association.
Numerous officials, including NCKU Faculty Union members
and Ministry representatives advised the current university
administration of laws. Either university counsel or the president
ignored them, electing to play a poker game with justice instead.
Indeed, Professor Chiang's representatives, including an associate dean
of Academic Affairs and an official from the Personnel Office,
threatened to litigate the case for years unless I resigned from the
university. Yet a university is a legitimate social institution,
supposedly upholding moral standards. It's not a shady business whose
purpose is to extort unfair exchanges. Poker games belong in the back
rooms of bars and pubs, not in administrative rooms of legitimate
universities.
Finally, the rhetoric of sympathy and caution that has been used in
the case of this student is not only misplaced, as I've argued above,
but offensive when compared to the haste and lack of regard towards me
that university officials showed when they promptly accepted the
student's letter in the first place. What such action suggests is that
despite a culture in which teachers are regarded highly, officials at
our university have more regard and sympathy for a Taiwan student than
for a foreign professor.
I wish to stress to the Ministry of Education and other agencies
aware of this case that I am fully committed to a just resolution of
all the issues, as detailed above. Also, long overdue, is a formal
apology from university officials for improperly accepting and then
circulating the student's malicious and libelous letter in the first
place. An institution without administrative remedy has no future.

Sincerely,

Professor Richard de Canio
Department of Foreign Languages and Literature
National Cheng Kung University
(06) 237 8626
(06) 2757575-52235