by Dennis Liu
On December 3, 1997, a poster in front of the Audio-Visual Center called for an emergency meeting of the faculty in the College of Liberal Arts. Many passers-by wondered, what kind of issue would ask for such a provocative poster, in this otherwise very easy-going college? Two days before the meeting, a university order was sent to the office of the college. It read: “[Since the credits of common required courses have been rearranged] in order to make the allocation of faculty resources more reasonable, if a lecturer in your college is retired, the vacancy will be recalled by the university board, and will be reallocated by the board accordingly.” “This is a nightmare for the college,” said Lin Yao-fu, Dean of the College of Liberal Arts and a professor in DFLL, during our interview. According to Lin, there is always a shortage of faculty positions in the college. If the university recalls every retired vacancy, the college would run out of lecturers in the long run. “The worst point is,” Lin said, “that this order is effective indefinitely.” So what is the college’s response? After the emergency faculty meeting, the college issued a unanimously-signed statement, asking the executive council of the university to reject the order, and that any resolution concerning the recall must be made after consulting all the departments of the college. “The order itself is completely illegitimate,” Lin said in an austere tone. “Such a powerful order is sent to the college without even consulting the Dean, or anyone I know on the university board. ” The motivation of the order is also questionable : “This college is already a minority. Everyone here works hard. Yet the university wants to recall our vacancies. Where to? The vacancies might be transferred to engineering departments, for example.” Aside from this conjecture, procedurally speaking the order is still unusual, even in terms of university internal politics, and “shows no respect at all to the college.” In the college conference held on December 24, an internal resolution asked the university to amend the order. It demanded the recalled vacancies be given exclusively to the college. That is, give the vacancies back to where they belong. The vice-president of Tai-da has “agreed in principle,” but so far the university board hasn’t responded to the college’s plea i n written form. Yet according to Lin, “We’ll push through it and ask for a clear, definite resolution no later than this April. At the moment this article was written, the university board couldn’t be reached for further comment. a
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May 2024
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