The National Taiwan University (NTU) administration has twisted the purpose of the Personal Information Protection Act (個人資料保護法) by using the act to justify its refusal to provide the NTU Student Association with a list of all students enrolled.
As a result, an election for student representatives that should have been held on Dec. 18 had to be postponed. This action by the university shows contempt for the principles of the University Act (大學法).
First, although the fundamental purpose of the Personal Information Protection Act is to prevent leaks of personal data and breaches of privacy, it does allow government agencies to collect, process and use personal data in accordance with the principle of proportionality, and for legitimate reasons, such as performing their statutory duties and furthering the public interest.
When a student association holds an election for student representatives, it does so in the interest of implementing campus democracy. It is legitimate and reasonable for the student association to ask the university to provide an enrollment list so that it can confirm student voters’ eligibility, and prevent election disputes and fraud.
An enrollment list is provided at all universities so that student associations can hold autonomous elections, so why is it only at NTU that this issue has sparked a dispute about obstructing student autonomy?
Second, the University Act states that universities should assist with student autonomy, but the NTU administration has adopted a haughty attitude in stubbornly obstructing the student representative election. How does this obstruction comply with the principle of administration as spelled out in the law?
The NTU situation is quite a contrast with National Chung Hsing University (NCHU), where a recent meeting of the student affairs committee decided that the word zhidao (指導), meaning “direction,” should be deleted from the Chinese title of the university’s Division of Extracurricular Activities.
Deleting this word is a significant change in that it reflects the NCHU administration’s respect for student autonomy. It means that the administration will apply gentle “assistance” or “guidance” when dealing with autonomous student organizations, rather than “direction,” which carries the sense of top-down commands.
Student self-governance is an integral aspect of university autonomy. A year or two ago, the Ministry of Education was refusing to approve the appointment of NTU professor Kuan Chung-ming (管中閔) as university president. At the time, Kuan vaunted the issue of university autonomy, while actually using it as a fig leaf to cover up his own illegal acceptance of part-time jobs and his association with plagiarized content in a thesis.
In January last year, Kuan finally took office as NTU president. Now that he has the power, he is trampling on university autonomy by abusing that power to suppress student autonomy.
Ironically, he is rolling NTU’s campus autonomy back to the bad old days of authoritarian rule. Why is Kuan acting in such a thuggish manner? Could it be that he harbors a grudge against the NTU Student Association for originally not supporting him over the issue of his appointment as president, and is seeking revenge?
The university’s management by such an authoritarian president has cast a menacing shadow over its tradition of academic liberalism.
Lai Yen-cheng is a National Chung Hsing University student and a former student representative in the university’s student government.
Translated by Julian Clegg
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