Universities should move toward abolishing dormitory curfews by implementing diversified management rules, Minister of Education Pan Wen-chung (潘文忠) said yesterday.
Pan made the remarks during a question-and-answer session at a meeting of the legislature’s Culture and Education Committee, where several lawmakers asked questions about the controversy surrounding a student-led protest against a curfew that Fu Jen Catholic University imposed on female students living in dormitories.
The education minister initially refrained from giving a direct response when Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Legislator Su Chiao-hui (蘇巧慧) asked his opinion on imposing curfews on female students, saying that universities have jurisdiction over the issue.
Photo: Fang Pin-chao, Taipei Times
DPP Legislator Rosalia Wu (吳思瑤) asked Pan to clarify his stance on the issue.
“Are such unreasonable access controls protecting female students, or are they putting them in greater danger?” Wu asked.
Pan said that the students are advocating total abolition of dormitory curfews, but that he thinks alternative management rules should be put in place before curfews are lifted.
When asked by DPP Legislator Hsu Chih-chieh (許智傑) how he would respond to students if he were the dean of Fu Jen, Pan said that he would probably issue identification cards to female students, granting them unlimited access to their dormitories via a card reader, provided that the time at which the students leave and return to their dormitories is recorded and forwarded to their parents.
Hsu showed a petition calling for the abolition of dormitory curfews at universities handed out by FJU Cinderella, a group formed by students opposed to the curfew, and asked Pan if he would sign it.
Pan said that he would if the language used in the petition were changed to: “I support abolishing dormitory curfews if accompanying measures are in place.”
In related news, Pan said that the ministry would form a new curriculum review committee comprising students, officials and experts within two months in accordance with a recently passed amendment to the Senior High School Education Act (高級中等教育法).
The new committee would be in charge of reviewing curriculum guidelines being drafted for a 12-year national education system, which are set to take effect in 2018.
Pan said that six draft proposals for the so-called “examination-enrollment corelative system” to be used in the 12-year national education system were discussed yesterday at a meeting of the Board of College Recruitment Commission, but that no conclusions had been reached.
The new testing system would come into effect in 2021, he said.
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:
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
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
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater