Subject: Your failure to discipline a student at our
universityTo: Huei-chen Ko
CC: moe
peu03@mail.gio.gov.tw, mail@mail.moe.gov.tw, vp@mail.oop.gov.tw,
twjrf@seed.net.tw, Control Yuan
Dean Ko Huei-chen
Office of Student Affairs
National Cheng Kung University
6 November 2003
cc: Office of the Premier, Minister of Education, Department of Higher
Education, Control Yuan, Taiwan Commission on Human Rights
Dear Dean Ko,
I find your behavior as Dean of Student Affairs irresponsible and
unacceptable and I am committed to exposing this case and effecting full
justice in its resolution. I am committed to using all legal channels,
including media channels, until full justice in this case is effected,
including the punishment of a student involved in misconduct as well as
the punishment of officials interfering in faculty-student contact to
prevent discipline of this student.
First, you and your vice-dean, who has now resigned, tactically
delayed the resolution of this case for years, doubtless hoping that,
faced with such stonewalling, I would give up my request for justice.
(Just yesterday, in fact, I attended yet another meeting with you,
expecting to find the student involved in misconduct, until I was
informed that she decided not to come. Apart from the countless delays
and the absurdity of a student controlling policy at the Office of
Student Affairs, you didn't even have the courtesy to cancel the
meeting.)
This tactic is typical at our university, except of course where a
foreign professor is concerned. Then university committees act
promptly, regardless if there is proof behind an accusation or if it has
been investigated. Compare the haste with which the university accepted
this student's secret (and therefore improper) complaint against me and
your delay in accepting my public (and therefore proper) complaint
against this student.
While ignoring every legal protection in order to persecute a
foreign professor, faculty here then invoke every so-called legal right
to protect a student. While there is no appeal to sympathy when
persecuting a foreign professor, there's a loud chorus of sympathy for a
student who wronged that professor. In fact, just yesterday (5 November
2003) you appealed to me for sympathy for this student. Did you know
that, less than one the day before, faculty from our college repeated
the same accusations against me that the Ministry of Education has
already rejected?
Yet legal rights are on my side, while there are no legal rights on
the side of this student. I know of no university administration in
the world that would argue that this student has legal rights that
protect her from being disciplined by a school administration. What
laws protect a student from discipline? A law may protect a student
from certain penalties, but not from discipline.
Seeming to be rational, you argue that a student involved in
misconduct should not even be invited into the Office of Student Affairs
to review her behavior. This is absurd. What kind of standards of
conduct are you advancing at our university? Moreover, these students
are also citizens. What kind of standards of conduct do you advance for
Taiwan society? Do you want to teach students, whom you consider your
children, that it's okay to engage in misconduct, since you will not be
required to admit your mistakes or apologize, especially if you have
powerful people on your side? Are these values you're teaching at our
university?
Seeming to be sympathetic, you ignore all the abuses that I've
suffered at this university, abuses that continue to this very day, as I
pointed out above in the incident that occurred just one day before our
meeting.
Seeming to be lawful, you argue that you cannot call a student into
the Office of Student Affairs. If you cannot do this, then there is no
administrative remedy at our university; there are no standards of
conduct; and, effectively, there is no real purpose to an Office of
Student Affairs.
Despite your claims, Dean Ko, you're not protecting a student's
rights, you're protecting a student. And beyond this, you may well know
that in protecting this student you're also protecting NCKU officials
who possibly solicited, wrongly accepted, then illegally circulated this
student's letter in the first place.
I remind you one more time, your obligation is to the law, not to
your colleagues. Your obligation is not to people who appointed you or
colleagues who pressure you or to your own conveience. You are bound by
law to fulfill the duties of your office. In public service, you are
your superior's good servant, but God's first.
This means that when your superior is opposed to God's laws, or
self-evident rules of conduct (now enshrined in the words, "human
rights"), you must choose God (or the Law) over your superior. But
there seems to be a confusion over these issues at our university. For
where else in the world would a university administration delay an
apology after an appeal committee found the university engaged in an
illegal dismissal? Where else in the world would an administration defy
a Ministry of Education ruling for more than two years? And where else
in the world do administrators claim the right to "interpret" laws or
choose from a selection of laws, as if the Law were a vending machine?
In conclusion, you know where I stand on these matters, since I've
made myself clear many times in the past. Needless to say, I have long
since run out of patience with the endless delays in the resolution of
this case. And I am committed to a full and just resolution of this
case, according to recognized standards of law and conduct. I will
continue to pursue all legal channels to effect a just closure of this
case. Since, following our last meeting yesterday, it seems evident you
are not committed to resolving this case the way I believe it should be,
it is clear I must pursue remedy outside our university.
Sincerely,
Professor Richard de Canio
Department of Foreign Languages and Literature
National Cheng Kung University
Tainan, Taiwan
(06) 237 8626
