A group of academics yesterday supported calls to lift a ban on students seeking elected office, saying the ban was irrelevant in keeping the influence of politics from the educational establishment.
"It is neither appropriate nor practical to prevent students from running in elections in an attempt to preserve educational neutrality and social stability," said Wu Chih-kuang (
"It is equally unrealistic to expect students to remain non-partisan, as candidates with political affiliations stand a better chance of success."
He suggested policymakers and legislators allow students to decide whether their political ambitions will have a negative impact on their academic performance.
The academics also found a recent ruling by the Council of Grand Justice both inadequate and vague, as it failed to address whether the ban abridges the students' constitutional right to participate in politics.
On May 31, the Council of Grand Justices handed down a ruling saying that administrative courts may not refuse to consider litigation brought by a student on procedural grounds.
Peng Tien-haw (
Existing election rules bar students, soldiers, police officers and certain public functionaries from playing any role in election campaigns.
After trying in vain to take his grievances to the election commission and the administrative court, Pong in 2000 asked the Council of Grand Justices to intervene.
The council ruled that the administrative court could not refuse to take up Pong's case on the grounds that a remedy was no longer possible, because the election date had passed.
"The court should launch a substantive review of the case as the elections at issue will be held again in the future," the majority opinion said.
Yang Tai-shun (
"Couched in vague language, the ruling is probably a product of compromise," he said. "By sidestepping the legality of the electoral ban, it provides more confusion than enlightenment."
While claiming victory, Pong, 31, has vowed to fight on until the legislature scraps the exclusionary clause from the election law.
Yang said it makes no sense to prohibit students from participating in election campaigns, as they can always go back to school later.
"The measure, intended to discourage students from entering politics, serves only to interrupt their education," he noted.
Those who wish to complete their education may apply to be re-admitted after the elections. School faculties normally will not withhold approval from such applicants.
Swei Duh-ching (
"That being so, candidates may mobilize their students to help out in their election campaigns," Swei said. "Many students may even volunteer to help. I wonder if it would be more desirable and realistic to allow students to freely express their political wishes."
He argued that the election rules, drawn during the martial-law era, are obsolete now that so many students and intellectuals support one party or another.
The fairness of the ban has also been called into question because it does not include schools overseas.
DPP Taipei City Councilor Yen Sheng-kuan (
Yang Yu-ling (
He said that as a student in China, he was asked by his professor to help solicit votes and ignored his schoolwork for a while.
"Campus stability is key to social order," Yang said. "Countries where students are enthusiastic about political movements are prone to riots."
FLU SEASON: Twenty-six severe cases were reported from Tuesday last week to Monday, including a seven-year-old girl diagnosed with influenza-associated encephalopathy Nearly 140,000 people sought medical assistance for diarrhea last week, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) said on Tuesday. From April 7 to Saturday last week, 139,848 people sought medical help for diarrhea-related illness, a 15.7 percent increase from last week’s 120,868 reports, CDC Epidemic Intelligence Center Deputy Director Lee Chia-lin (李佳琳) said. The number of people who reported diarrhea-related illness last week was the fourth highest in the same time period over the past decade, Lee said. Over the past four weeks, 203 mass illness cases had been reported, nearly four times higher than the 54 cases documented in the same period
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not