Letter to Dean of Student Affairs (11 March 2002)

Letter to Dean of Student Affairs
3/11/2002 10:36 AM

11 March 2002

Professor Ker,
There are a number of issues we discussed over the telephone, which,
since you claim to want to do the right thing, I would like to explore into
a little more detail here.
You claim, for example, that the student's case is confusing and it is
difficult to decide the truth of the matter. I would be the first to agree
with this. However, this admirable standard of testing hearsay by legal
(not to mention moral) standards should have been applied BEFORE the
student's accusation was
accepted, not AFTER it was accepted to discredit a professor.
But this devious double standard is common at our university, where an
appeal to law is made only to conceal abuses of the law and not to prevent
or correct them. If a student secretly and maliciously discredits a
professor, standards of law and decency are ignored. But when the injured
teacher tries to effect justice for abuses of the law, the university
appeals to the law!
I would like to remind you that, not only laws, but moral standards,
were violated when this student's secret accusation was accepted by a
previous dean. What reasonable official would accept a secret accusation,
much less one that was clearly written with a malicious intent and referred
to unsupported accusations of many
years before? At my Alma Mater, for example, graduate students had a public
book where they could evaluate their professors. But the scrapbook also
contained a warning that malicious comments about a professor would be
ripped out of the book.
Professor Ker, students have rights, but also responsibilities, usually
regulated by legal channels of complaint. This student elected not to
pursue her complaint through regular legal channels and within a restricted
period of time when the testimony of other students and comparison with
other students' exams could easily have discredited her complaint. Even
several years later, when most reasonable people would agree that I had no
obligation to respond to her complaint, I did so, suggesting I could go to
my office and locate her exam. She ignored my letter and, as I was
informed, advised my colleague that she would contact a lawyer if I pursued
the matter further. Then, five years later, she files a SECRET complaint,
which was so obviously malicious that it should have discredited itself.
Indeed, no reputable chairman or dean would have accepted it, much less
credited it. On the contrary, a reputable dean or chair at a reputable
university would have cautioned the student to submit only legitimate
complaints in the future.
Professor Ker, did it ever occur to you the kind of letter I could
write, if I so chose, against this student? Believe me, it would make her
own letter appear mild in comparison. But, being an honorable person, I am
aware that my opinions of this student are personal and should have no
special relevance to that student's academic standing or professional
employment. If you notice, my current complaints against this student are
based on documented facts; on her own letter of complaint, which most
reasonable persons would find hostile; and on specific issues that concern
legal rights at our university. I am not interested in a general character
assassination of this student, especially since the facts speak for
themselves.
But did the facts speak for themselves in the student's letter?
Professor Ker, there were no facts! Even without the documentation I have
referred to in
previous faxes, no worthy official should have allowed that secret
accusation.
I ignore other, more routine, legal rights issues, such as that, as an
appellant, new
accusations should not have been accepted against me. The whole point of an
appeal is to defend against old accusations, not be subject to new ones.
The fact that these new accusations were apparently intended to "save" the
department's weak case against me only adds to the injury. A dean of an
appeal committee is supposed to protect an appellant's rights, not
compromise them.
(Only a naive person would imagine that this student's letter was NOT
solicited at that special time in order to effect my dismissal, however
illegally. The fact that the letter was even accepted, although dated
months after the department's initial accusations, only adds to the witches'
brew of legal rights violations at our university.)
The facts are plain. The former dean who handled this case should have
reversed it as soon as he realized the department's accusations against me
were not proved. But he chose a social conformity over a conformity to the
law. Perhaps this dean observed his conscience. But observing one's
conscience is not sufficient if one's conscience does not recognize the law.

I have been informed that the dean accepted this secret accusation
because the student affirmed she was willing to go to court and repeat her
claim. According to this official, her claim was therefore acceptable as
true.
Professor Ker, if I tell you that I am willing to go to court to swear
that I am Santa Claus, does that prove to your intellectual satisfaction
that I am Santa Claus?
(For the record, in court, this student chastised me for taking this
case to court! She also claimed not to have remembered taking other courses
from me, in which she received high passes, the same year she claims she
failed unfairly. Courtroom testimony also suggested that at least one
university official, a current dean at our
university, committed perjury to discredit me.)
Professor Ker, you appeal to the law to explain why an investigation
into this student's accusation is being delayed. But are you aware how many
violations of
law, whether moral or legal, were necessary in order to effect my dismissal
from the university? I'll list some of them.
1. The former chair of my department accepted secret accusations
against me at a review meeting. These accusations became the basis for my
dismissal at the departmental review meeting. I was never informed of these
accusations, although the chairman had one year to do so.
(This same chairman had the wisdom to inform me early in the first
semester that he needed a teacher for a night class. I informed him that,
in sympathy with his new chairmanship, I would accept an additional night
course. Yet this same chairman did not see fit to inform me of accusations
used in the department dismissal motion against me many months later, in
March.
Professor Ker, apart from legal rights violations, does the chairman's
behavior represent the best in principles of Chinese reciprocity to your
mind?)
2. These secret accusations were never properly investigated, according
to
Ministry regulations.
3. They were never proved, according to Ministry standards of proof.
4. Accusers included members of the review committee!
5. A review committee isn't even supposed to make accusations against a

professor, but merely "review" accusations against him.
Professor Ker, since you recognize the law, where is the observance of
law in these instances?
To be frank, I think very few people at our university have the
slightest knowledge of democratic process or even interest in it. Those few
who do don't care enough to challenge the rest who don't. Perhaps you're
one of them, since you told me it's all very confusing. I don't think so.
I think violations here were flagrant, if not outrageous. In any case, an
official at a university does not have the same right to be confused about
observance of the law.
To take the student complaint, all that is necessary for you to know is
that a student was allowed to accuse me and I was not allowed to defend
myself against her complaint, or even informed of it. If that does not
outrage your sense of moral conscience, then, frankly, your moral sense is
different from mine. But I'll say one thing for certain. If your child was
expelled from an American university based on another student's secret
complaint, you would no longer be confused about either the moral or legal
issues involved.
Professor Ker, we cannot square our conscience with acts such as I've
detailed here, anymore than we can square a circle. The law is a public
thing, not a private opinion. You cannot square the circle of justice by
saying you will obserrve one law, ignore that law, select this law, and
interpret another law. Democracy is a govenrment of laws; but it is also a
government of Law, which means an impartial and routine execution of laws.
For example, do you seriously believe that if this student had written the
same complaint against Kao Chiang or Lee Chen-er that it would have been
accepted? I think you would agree that the student's complaint would have
gone straight to the trash can; or worse: straight to the accused party so
he could chastise the student himself.
Professor Ker, you appeal with confidence to university laws. Do you
think that our committees have the same confidence in these laws?
Previously, a chairman in 1994 tried to effect my dismissal. He used
several "student evaluations" against me. In the same manner related above,
I was never informed of these evaluations, nor was I allowed a chance to
defend myself against them, nor were they even official
evaluations. Rather, they were solicited by the chairman in order to
discredit me and then effect my dismissal. This chairman was never punished
for this offense. On the contrary, according to the routine indifference to
law at our university, this individual (who also perjured himself in court
on behalf of the student who accused me) was elected dean of a college last
academic year.
As for my teaching contract, you know I won a Ministry of Education
award, canceling my dismissal. Presumably, this means my dismissal is not
in effect. Yet the university administration has interdicted the
enforcement of this ruling.
Professor Ker, you mention observance of law. Do you think the
Ministry of Education represents law in Taiwan? If not, what does it
represent? Or, put differently, who represents the law? Kao Chiang or the
university lawyers? Believe me, Professor Ker, if the Taiwan constitution
wanted university lawyers to represent the law of the land, it would say
so. If the Taiwan constitution wanted individual lawyers to interpret the
law of the land, it would say so. But, so far as I know, only the judiciary
in any democracy, including Taiwan, is authorized to interpret the law; all
other officials are obligated to enforce it.
Do you think an appeal decision in an appellant's favor can be
interpreted to mean that appellant merely has the right to appeal again?
Does this sound like a
rational point of view? Does it sound like a moral point of view?
If all a person could win by appealing was the right to appeal again, do
you think anyone would waste time to appeal? What would be the point? Even
if the university believed this, they would have had to make this clear from
the very beginning.
In law, many things are assumed. When you point to a picture of a
car and pay NT500,000, it is assumed, in law, you are buying the car, not
the picture of the car. But what if a devious lawyer claimed you had merely
bought the picture of a car? Would you still be "confused" over right and
wrong?
What if you owned a restaurant and a customer had an expensive meal
and then said he would pay you when he had the money. What if
he brought along a devious lawyer who claimed the menu did not say
payment had to be immediately after consumption of the meal and he
"interpreted" the menu to mean the customer could pay anytime before his
death?
Or perhaps this devious lawyer advises payment in weaker currency,
amounting to one-third the value in the exchange rate. The devious lawyer
claims the menu did not specify which currency should be paid and therefore
"interprets" it to mean any currency rather than local currency. Would you
still claim to be "confused" as to
the right and wrong of the situation, Professor Ker?
Or what if your student copied answers off his hand during an
examination. He claims that he is not cheating, since he is merely copying
answers he already knows. Would you still claim to be confused over the
right and wrong of the situation?
Finally, what if your child takes money from your purse but denies he is
stealing, since, as your son, what belongs to you belongs to him too. At
least, if he had the acquaintance of a devious lawyer, that's what he would
think of saying.
Professor Ker, the university had an appeal process, in which both of
us participated. Participation in a legal process implies, in law, consent
to the routine obligations that process entails, based upon commonsense
understandings. If you eat a meal in a restaurant, this implies consent to
certain obligations (for example, you will pay in local currency, and
immediately after consuming it). You cannot,
after consuming the meal, claim the meal was "inedible" and therefore you
are not obligated to pay. If you thought the food was not good enough to be
eaten, you were obligated to express that thought at the beginning not the
end.
The university's participation in the appeal process implies consent to
duties and obligations of the appeal process. But, in December, 1999, after
I won a university appeal, the university claimed that, as a foreigner, I
should be reviewed again!
Professor Ker, would you like your child to pass qualifying exams at a
foreign university only to be told, after he passed, that, as a foreigner
from Taiwan, he had to pass them again? Would you be "morally confused"
about the issue? I think not.
Lacking further confidence in observance of law, or even moral
standards, at our university, I appealed to the Ministry of Education. The
Ministry of Education wrote a strongly-worded appeal decision in my favor,
pointing out countless
irregularities in the university dismissal, a dismissal, I remind you, that
was UNANIMOUSLY passed by the university committee of eighteen members!
Professor Ker, since you frequently appeal to the law, what do you think
this suggests about the knowledge of law at our university, if all eighteen
members of a university committee, presumably the most legally observant
committee at the
university, cannot see legal violations that are obvious to an appeal
committee outside the university? As a professor, indeed, an official, at
our university, do you feel any sense of shame in this?
Professor Ker, I point out merely the egregious violations committed in
the university's vendetta against me. There were countless others, such as
returning a case back to a lower committee, when the case should have been
terminated by the superior committee; or missing deadlines to file a case
against me but filing the case anyway (if I missed a deadline to appeal, do
you think the university would allow
this?).
The violations are obvious. But apart from legal violations, there is
the abiding issue of moral standards. University officials who observe a
lesser moral standard than is required of our students should be dismissed
from the university. For without moral credibility, a university has no
academic credibility.
Thus I would like to conclude by appealing to your moral sense,
including moral principles such as good faith, treating others as you wish
to be treated, honesty, keeping one's word, and so forth. So I ask you and
your morally awakened colleagues to do the right thing.
The right thing is for you and your colleagues to compel the university
to honor the law, to observe moral and legal standards at our university, to
punish reprobate students who maliciously accused a teacher, and to put this
scandal behind us so that we can uphold the reputation of our university and
protect the inheritance of our students.
Sincerely,

Richard de Canio