This was a dismissal notice dated 1994, from then Department chair, Ren Shyh-jong (a rough Romanization of his Chinese name). Despite the formal language, what Prof. Ren meant by "concrete evidence" was unsigned evaluations solicited by the department that were intended to discredit me.
(By "unsigned" I don't mean without a signature, but without any indication whatsoever that those evaluations were even filled out in a classroom or by students. They might have come from anywhere, including someone's home. The only thing official about them, as I recall, were the forms.) That they were intended to discredit me is a reasonable assumption since I was not called in to challenge them or even knew about them until after the department dismissal.
The phrase, "for your sake," is surely Orwellian. How can a meeting be for the sake of a person if he doesn't even know the meeting is being held and is not allowed to appear to challenge the so-called "concrete evidence" (i.e. unofficial evaluation forms)? How can a "review" be "comprehensive and thorough" if unsigned and undocumented forms (presumably solicited) are used? And, of course, how can a review be "comprehensive and thorough" if the person being "reviewed" doesn't even know about the review and is not called to appear?
This is "democracy" at National Cheng Kung University. This was 1994 (though the Doublespeak suggests 1984), and the dismissal was quickly overturned by the College. Five years later matters "improved" at the university and my dismissal, with even more egregious human rights violations, was defiantly passed by numerous NCKU committees, including so-called "review" and "appeal" meetings (some more Doublespeak at National Cheng Kung University).
Apparently the university wasn't going to take any chances this time and embarrass one of their compatriots by reversing his dismissal decision. (That chair was Li Chung-hsiung, in rough Romanization.) (This is called "groupthink" in modern parlance.) So they insured my dismissal would pass even though they must have known it could not possibly pass the Ministry Appeals Committee. But they probably anticipated that possibility too, knowing they would ignore the Ministry ruling if it went against them, which in fact they did under Kao Chiang's presidency (the ruling came out on 8 January 2001 and was finally enforced in May 2003). Of course, better still, most officials presumably thought I could never survive in Taiwan long enough to contest the case anyway; so the aim was apparently to extend the case as long as possible to outlast my visa renewals and savings.
I should add that Mr. Ren later defended my former student, Lily Chen's accusation that I destroyed her exam, the exam she claimed (eight years after she took it!) she failed unfairly. These arguments are reviewed in numerous dated letters on this web site. I will merely present a summary here.
First, how in the name of Democracy, Law, Reason or Commonsense (or whatever other idealistic word one cares to use) can a student complain about a grade eight years later and be taken seriously by the department (and later the College and University itself)? Does a reputable university conduct itself like this?
(Proleptically, let me say I did NOT destroy Ms. Chen's exam and even asked her, over the telephone, to take it back to review her mistakes shortly after the grade was recorded. She declined. But I'm a legalist, and since I can't prove this ("it's her word against mine"), I'll only cite proven facts, which even Ms. Chen did not deny in court. This is called a "preponderance of evidence" in civil trials. Criminal trials require guilt "beyond a reasonable doubt"; but civil trials only require a "preponderance of evidence"; that is, enough evidence to favor one side rather than another. This is what I intend to show in this summary, though there are numerous other letters related to this case on this blog.)
Second, how can a complaint be accepted without a shred of evidence, except the student's claim itself, which is then called "evidence" in Orwellian equivocal logic or doublethink used at NCKU: the fact that the student has no evidence is evidence of evidence (i.e. evidence I destroyed the evidence!). In most democracies absence of evidence inculpates the accuser; but at NCKU absence of evidence inculpates the accused! Ms. Chen has no copy of her exam therefore that proves she failed unfairly not that she libeled me unfairly! I repeat, this happened in 1994, not 1984.
As I understand the university's argument, since Ms. Chen said she was willing to go to court, if necessary, and repeat her claim, the university therefore thought her complaint was legitimate! But an undocumented accusation is an undocumented accusation whether it's made in Starbucks Coffee House, in a Court of Law, or in a Buddhist temple or Christian church. If I say I'm willing to go to court to prove that one Professor Chen is Santa Claus, I suppose NCKU officials will conclude that Professor Chen must be Santa Claus! Ms. Chen was not punished by the court because, presumably, an undocumented accusation, made eight years after the fact, and in secret, as part of a dismissal process, is not subject to libel or slander laws in Taiwan.
I would like to add that I was not able to win a single lawsuit against NCKU officials or that NCKU student. My only consolation prize was the university was required to enforce the Ministry of Education's ruling--nearly two and a half years late, without penalty! Since I can't read Chinese, I can only paraphrase here; but from what I understand, the court ruled in Ms. Chen's case that it's reasonable if a student thinks she failed unfairly! But the case was (in fact is, since I don't think it's over) not about whether Ms. Chen thought she failed unfairly, but whether she acted improperly in claiming it as fact rather than opinion. As a student I felt sometimes my grade was lower than I thought I deserved, but I never accused the teacher of grading me unfairly, and doing so in secret, eight years later, as part of a secret dismissal action against the teacher! (I would like to add modestly that on an equal number of occasions I thought my grade was higher than I thought I deserved.)
Similarly, I sued the members of the Department Review Committee for making accusations without informing me of them in advance, properly investigating them, or allowing me to defend myself against them before using them as a basis for dismissal. This case, as I recall, was dismissed by the D.A. before it even went to court on the basis the accusations were not made public. But in all libel statutes I've consulted if only one person other than the insulted party himself views the accusation that constitutes libel under the law! And those accusations were clearly disseminated at other committees (such as the Lily Chen letter). Moreover, those who did view the accusations were precisely the ones who finalized my dismissal! So if libel is determined based on injury to a person then that must surely be libel!
Finally, I won no compensatory damages from the university because the court ruled there was no reason for me to have stayed in Taiwan while fighting my dismissal. But how could I have fought a dismissal from America without going broke flying back and forth every time a department, college, or university committee required my presence? And even if I flew back to Taiwan for that single meeting, it might have been canceled until the following week in a cycle of attrition until I quit the case. Besides, another judge awarded custody of an American father's child to its Taiwanese mother on the basis that the father proved he had no interest in the child by flying back to America in the meantime! In other words, heads you win, tails I lose. National Cheng Kung University seems immune to any legal action against it, and yet Taiwanese expect advances in their educational system.
Third, how can a complaint be made in secret, i.e. without the teacher's knowledge or right to defend himself against it? Presumably at NCKU you're not supposed to defend yourself, but merely submit to authoritarian edicts. To NCKU's credit I was not forced to wear a conical hat with a sign around my neck detailing accusations against me.
Fourth, in a democracy, how can such a complaint pass a department review? With typical NCKU doublespeak, an undemocratic process is considered democratic "review," just like a "final appeal" simply allows the victorious appellant to appeal again, interminably, until the appellant gives up. So, in NCKU doublespeak, the appellant gave up his right to appeal after he tired of having his appeal victories ignored! If American universities started treating Taiwanese citizens the same way, Taiwan officials would finally understand the meaning of human rights and law.
Fifth, how can such a letter pass so-called oversight committees; in fact, even be secretly circulated by those committees? (I was allowed to read Ms. Chen's complaint only after I took her to court.) (By oversight committees, I mean the so-called College Review and Appeal committees and the University Review and Appeal Committees, all of which repeatedly passed my dismissal, even after the Ministry ruling in my favor.)
Sixth, Mr. Ren, chair of the department when Ms. Chen failed her exam, supported her claim that I destroyed her exam. But if this is the case, why didn't Mr. Ren challenge the grade at the time? He could easily have called a meeting with me and asked for the exam. If I failed to show the exam he could have imposed penalties at the time and had Ms. Chen's grade reversed. But there is no record of such a meeting. Yet the court presumably accepted this testimony as a reasonable explanation, or at least did not challenge it.
Ironically, the documented evidence (not mere hearsay) does not show I failed in my performance as a teacher; rather the evidence (by Mr. Ren's own court testimony) does show that Mr. Ren, based on reasonable standards, failed in his performance as an official--or else he perjured himself in court. There's no alternative conclusion. Either Mr. Ren told the truth in court, and Ms. Chen really did complain about her grade to Ren but he failed to take appropriate action (thus, official negligence) or Ms. Chen really never complained about her grade to Mr. Ren, in which case he perjured himself along with Ms. Chen in court. I'd like to hear an alternative explanation, BY REASONABLE STANDARDS.
The evidence favors me, based on democratic principles of judicial process. The main principle is the presumption of innocence: I do not have to prove my innocence, rather Ms. Chen has to prove my culpability. If I say something outrageous, for example that one Mr. Wang comes from Mars, Mr. Wang does not have to spend two years obtaining affidavits proving he was born in Taiwan, show his passport stamps for entries and exits, show his school records, etc. The burden of proof is on the accuser, the more so the more outrageous or unreasonable the accusation is. Who's going to credit an accusation of an unfair grade 8 years before, especially without a single piece of evidence, such as Ms. Chen's exam? What legitimate university will place the burden of proof on the accused rather than the accuser? (I mean, apart from the Department of Foreign Languages and Literature at National Cheng Kung University in Tainan, Taiwan.) As I said above, at NCKU, the fourth-ranked university in Taiwan, absence of evidence is evidence of evidence; since Ms. Chen could not produce her exam, that proved, not that Ms. Chen improperly accused her professor but that the professor improperly destroyed the exam!
The reason we have statutes of limitation is to protect the innocent, not to shield the guilty. It's true sometimes such statutes may work that way, such as with abused children who may need years to recall abuse or be mature enough to testify; but usually it works the way it was intended to: that is, to insure the accused can defend themselves properly, when exculpatory documents are easy to obtain, memories fresh, witnesses (in this case, classmates) available, etc.
First, one has got to question why it takes someone years to file a complaint. Second, the accused can't defend himself properly after the passing of many years, even if there were apparent inculpatory evidence (in this case there was none, just Ms. Chen's claim). Even if Ms. Chen produced the exam, one would need to compare that exam with at least a sampling of high passes from that same class. That can't be done years later. Hence the need for statutes of limitations.
For those who are thinking of coming to Taiwan to teach or matriculate here, I should add that there is no adversarial court system in Taiwan as in the United States and some other democracies. Practically, there is no vigorous cross-examination of testimony or depositions. I believe only the judge can decide on the veracity of testimony or decide the degree of challenging that testimony (unlike the vigorous cross-examination of witnesses and documents in an American courtroom).
For this reason I would really love to see this case presented in an American courtroom. No American lawyer would allow an argument such as presented by the department, including Ms. Chen and Mr. Ren, to go uncontested. The cross-examination of Mr. Ren would proceed in something like the following manner:
"If, as you claim, Ms. Chen complained about her grade, why, Mr. Ren, didn't you challenge the grade at the time? If, as you claim, you were told the professor had destroyed the exam, you could have--indeed, as chair of the department, you SHOULD have, summoned the professor to a hearing when the dispute was still fresh, when real evidence could have been collected, classmates interviewed, Lily's exam compared to other exams from that same class, etc. But, for whatever reason, you did not do so, assuming your claim is truthful in the first place. Now it doesn't matter WHY you did not do so; whether from incompetence or negligence. What matters is you did not do so, hence there is no record of such a complaint about Ms. Chen's grade, and, finally, there can be no credible reason why you should be allowed to revive the complaint in 1999, especially in secret, or defend her accusation today in court.
"Moreover, you tried to dismiss this same professor from the department in 1994, as the above letter shows. Yet at no time in the dismissal hearing, including at the department and college levels, where the dismissal was overturned, did you ever bring up this issue of an unfair failing grade given to Ms. Chen. Yet now, in defense of Ms. Chen's SECRET and UNDOCUMENTED accusations against this professor that he failed her unfairly, you want the jury to believe that that unfair grade was reported to you at the time of the exam or soon thereafter.
"But none of this makes sense, Mr. Ren. Why didn't you take action after Ms. Chen's complaint? Why didn't you mention the grade when you attempted to dismiss the professor in 1994? Why was the grade only mentioned when it was mentioned IN SECRET and the accusing parties must have been fairly certain the professor would never learn about the complaint, which you repeatedly kept from him through numerous hearings and which he read only after he filed a lawsuit against Ms. Chen.
"In addition, based on your improper use of unsigned student evaluations in your 1994 dismissal, there is reasonable evidence that you tend to compromise due process of law when it suits you. If you compromised the professor's rights in 1994 why should we believe you are doing anything different in your testimony before the court today? I remind you that your dismissal of the professor was overturned even by your own college, The College of Liberal Arts, which saw something improper in the dismissal action.
"Finally, we have documented proof, submitted to this court, that the professor in 1994 wrote Ms. Chen a letter, dated several years before the 1999 dismissal, when Ms. Chen's secret accusation was circulated. In that letter the professor, responding to gossip he had failed Ms. Chen unfairly, clearly stated, in a letter to Ms. Chen, that if necessary he would try to locate Ms. Chen's exam in his office in order to challenge the gossip. In court, Ms. Chen did not deny receiving the letter. She merely attempted to explain or justify why she ignored the professor's letter.
"However a court is not required to speculate about occult motives but reasonable motives: why would a student who insists a professor failed her unfairly reject the opportunity to take back the very exam that would prove her accusation true, if it were in fact true? There is no reasonable explanation for this, and our jurors are reasonable citizens. Simply saying someone told her not to is not a reasonable explanation in my opinion and, I believe, in the opinion of the average person, including the respectable jurors on this panel. Ms. Chen had nothing to lose by responding to the professor's letter. Either the professor could not produce the exam, which would at least prove her claim that he destroyed her exam. Or he would produce it and, assuming Ms. Chen's claim that she failed unfairly, she would try to show to the department that she failed unfairly, or, at the very least, she would compromise the teacher's grading standards.
"But she did not pursue this avenue of remedy. I repeat, Ms. Chen never denied receiving this letter from the professor. So there's no dispute about the letter being sent or being read. Nor, since the letter is preserved, is there any dispute about the contents of the letter, including the invitation to look for Ms. Chen's disputed exam. What is also not in dispute is that Ms. Chen refused to accept the professor's offer. Yet, despite refusing to accept the professor's offer to locate her exam, this same student, five years later, when she had an opportunity to do so in secret, wrote a secret letter to the department repeating her claim she failed unfairly.
"There is a pattern here, namely to avoid a public formal complaint in favor of a secret complaint. Now people who are telling the truth prefer to expose their claim rather than conceal it. As the Gospels tell us, Truth seeks the light, not the dark. But presumably Ms. Chen had to make her accusation in secret, either as regular gossip or as a secret letter to a dismissal hearing, which incidentally was dated a day before that dismissal hearing. It's ironic, too, that the accused professor had no knowledge at all of the dismissal hearing whereas this student knew about the dismissal hearing, possibly even the exact date of the hearing, since the letter is dated the day before the hearing!
"There is other evidence however. Besides her single failed grade in the first semester of that academic year, Ms. Chen received 3 reasonably high passes from this same professor, including two passes the following semester. Why would a professor unfairly fail a student in one class but not the other? Why would the professor then pass this same student in both classes in the following semester? Or, for that matter, if the student thought she failed unfairly, why did she continue to stay in the professor's classes? If I thought my teacher failed me unfairly the first action I would take as a student would be to transfer to another teacher so I would not be failed again unfairly, even if I had to wait for the next year to redo the class.
"In fact, based on court testimony, fully documented, Ms. Chen even denied taking another class from this professor, the class in which she received two reasonably high passes. I think the reasonable members of this jury will agree that it's virtually impossible that a student can remember one class, where she claimed she failed unfairly, yet not remember another class from that very same year, where she received two reasonably high passes. Ms. Chen is either reckless with the truth or her personal memory of the truth, which only to some degree attenuates her culpability. Regardless, apart from the documented evidence, Ms. Chen's personal testimony cannot be relied upon to determine the truth and must be discredited.
"But there's yet another piece of evidence, submitted to the court, and thus of public record, that I would like to refer to. This is a signed letter by no fewer than 7 (SEVEN) faculty members of the Department of Foreign Languages and Literature, all of them in support of Lily Chen as "a modest and virtuous young woman of good character." The letter is signed and dated November 27, 2000, in order to support Ms. Chen in the professor's lawsuit against her. The letter was intended to discredit the professor and to defend Ms. Chen. Several of the signatories were or are now on the prestigious and powerful department Review Committee, including the current chair of the Department of Foreign Languages and Literature, Aaron Chiou (Chiou Yuan-guey) and the current Dean of the College of Liberal Arts, Raymond Lai, the accused professor's former student for whom he wrote a reference letter in 1994. Ironically, the same student who relied on the professor's moral character to write him a decent reference letter then supported a student who discredited him! Even more ironic, though the letter was intended to discredit the professor, to any reasonable person it discredited those who signed it instead; for on what reasonable basis would professors defend a student who complained about a grade eight years late, without proof, and in secret? Why would these professors credit the word of a student who had no proof except her claim over their own colleague who was never before, and has never since, been accused by a student of unfair grading? Yet these signatories, both of them on the Review Committee, now play key roles in every department review and college appeal. In other words, the same two professors who decided that a student who complained about a grade 8 years late, in secret, and without proof was "of a moral and virtuous character," now decide the academic fates (including promotion, tenure, and dismissal) of many professors in our university! Since Lily Chen had no proof of her claim, which was made 8 years late and in secret, the number of professors who supported her--all of them from the Department of Foreign Languages and Literature--tends to undermine the moral integrity of the Department of Foreign Languages and Literature rather than the moral integrity of the accused professor!
"There is yet another issue regarding this case. Ever since Ms. Chen's secret complaint, in 1999, the accused professor has sought remedy, including repeated requests to the Dean of Student Affairs to resolve this dispute at the formal level. Over a period of several years the Office of Student Affairs, through various officials, including former Dean of Student Affairs, Chen Huei-KO, the office has denied my requests for numerous reasons ("she's no longer a student," etc.). The main issue is usually the injured party pursues remedy. Now one would think that if Ms. Chen really believed the professor failed her unfairly, she, not the professor, would be the one petitioning the Office of Student Affairs to pursue remedy in her case; or at the very least, if the professor really failed this student unfairly, he would be quite happy for the case to disappear, not to repeatedly pursue a formal resolution to the case. In fact, it's curious that the university quickly dropped the Lily Chen part of the dismissal while reviving other accusations in its interminable cycle of appeal and review. The other accusations did not involve a definite person, so the university could hide behind its bureaucratic machinery, where no one is really responsible for making those accusations; but the Lily Chen accusation involved too much risk for an individual, so the university had to quickly drop the accusation. At National Cheng Kung University, you see, no one is really ever accountable, and that's the way this university prefers to keep it.
"Based on these arguments, I ask the reasonable members of the jury to decide who is telling the truth in this case."
In sum, why would Mr. Ren use UNSIGNED student evaluations in order to effect my dismissal in 1994 (see above letter) when he could have used a SIGNED letter of complaint from Lily Chen about my so-called unfair failure of her? It just doesn't add up, except to say the obvious: the accusation about the unfair failure was false and neither Mr. Ren nor Ms. Chen wanted to risk libel in saying so publicly. So the only way the letter could be written was in secret, certain that I would never read it, much less defend myself against it; since, if the departmental dismissal was successful, which then was highly likely due, not to law but to groupthink typical of NCKU's handling of this case, I could not survive in Taiwan long enough to insure ultimate justice.
I should add that despite Mr. Ren's history at NCKU, at the same time the university was refusing to enforce a legal Ministry of Education ruling in my favor, Ren Shyh-jong was elected Dean of the College of Liberal Arts (August 2001-2004), the final slap in the face at the injustice I suffered at this university.
That's democracy at National Cheng Kung University, the fourth-ranked university in Taiwan with numerous sister exchanges in the US and other democracies.
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