Letter to Dean of Student Affairs (15 July 2003)

Letter to Dean of Student Affairs
15 Jul 2003 14:14:10 -0700
To:
Huei-chen Ko
CC:
Kao Chiang , moe


Ko Heui-chen
Dean of Student Affairs

cc: President's Office, Ministry of Education, Department of Higher
Education

15 July 2003

Dear Dean Ko

I am not satisfied with the constant delays in your handling of the
case of the student, Chen An-chuen, who wrote a secret
malicious letter accusing a professor.
I have reminded you repeatedly that this is a simple case. Nowhere
in any country in the world that I'm familiar with is
there a law preventing a dean from calling a student into her office for
any reason whatsoever, whether it's to confirm a
phone number or in response to a complaint from faculty or students.
Furthermore, I remind you, as I've reminded another official at our
university, the responsibility of an elected or
appointed official can be delegated but not transferred. As far as I'm
concerned, the responsibility for handling this Lily
Chen case rests with you and accountability for not handling this case
rests with you too. Your vice-dean may be
accountable to you, but you are accountable to faculty at our university
and, ultimately, to the Department of Higher
Education and the Ministry of Education.
As a professor of this university I have the right to ask the Dean
of Students to call a student into her office. Moreover,
the student is required to appear. The student has no right to ask for
what reason. The student will find out the reason soon
enough in the proper way.
No deep study of documents is necessary for doing this. All you
need to do this is an air-conditioned room with a door.
And, if necessary, we could do without the air conditioner.
As for whether this student was a student when she wrote her
letter, that would be of no concern anyway. But for the
record, Ms. Chen told your vice-dean, Professor Tsai, at a meeting
several months ago, that everything in her letter was
"true." So the issue of when Ms. Chen wrote her original complaint is
without relevance anyway.
Finally, as for "studying" the court documents, that has no
relevance to this case either.
First, a professor has a right to ask the Dean of Students to
arrange a meeting with a student, for whatever reason.
Second, the Dean of Students has the responsibility to arrange such
a meeting.
Third, all current students are required to respond to such a
request when made.
Fourth, a university meeting has no judicial status. If it did, a
judge would have to preside at it. But we don't have judges
who preside at such meetings, we have deans or chairpeople.
Please arrange a meeting with this student, you, me, and other
persons you think necessary within days.
Thank you.

Sincerely,

Professor Richard de Canio
Department of Foreign Languages and Literature
National Cheng Kung University
Tainan, Taiwan
(06) 237 8626