National Taiwan University (NTU) is to be fined NT$30,000 after a question in an entrance exam for the Department of Technical Engineering in March 2016 was found to contravene the Gender Equity Education Act (性別平等教育法).
Students were asked to describe “a social responsibility engineers should fulfill, as well as the natural or social law this social responsibility is based on” in 100 words or less.
The preface to the question read: “There are also many laws in society, such as: a person must leave their parents and join with their wife, the two people becoming one; a family is comprised of a man and a woman, a husband and a wife, this is the law of society and family.”
Photo: Rachel Lin, Taipei Times
“An engineer’s innovation cannot contravene natural laws, society’s harmony cannot contravene social laws. Although there are some exceptions, the following question does not include these exceptions,” the preface said.
The NTU Student Congress, which reported the question to the Ministry of Education, said that the professor who wrote the question abused their power and it had demanded that all students be given full marks, but the department had only apologized in a statement.
The ministry’s gender equity education committee said that the question contravened the concept of “diverse family formations,” limited students’ responses with the “one man, one woman” statement in its preface, negatively affecting students’ rights.
It issued three penalties — the NT$30,000 fine; a requirement that the professor who wrote the question attend a gender equity education course; and that the faculty create a gender-friendly environment.
NTU filed administrative litigation to appeal the penalties, but later withdrew the litigation for the latter two penalties.
The Taipei High Administrative Court transferred proceedings over the NT$30,000 fine to the Taipei District Court.
The answers were graded by a teacher with no religious beliefs and who had worked as an engineer for several years, the university said, adding that there was no differential treatment in the grading of students’ essays.
Since Article 19 of the act regulates teachers and not schools, the ministry cannot penalize the university, NTU said, adding that the essay question should not be considered an “educational activity” as referred to in the article because the students were not enrolled at the university.
Test questions are within the scope of a university’s autonomy and academic freedom, and the ministry should respect that, it said, adding that the ministry should not “set a precedent” by penalizing NTU because it is a top university.
The Taipei District Court in May last year ruled that while test questions and grading are within the scope of university autonomy, academic freedom and university autonomy cannot be used as reasons to contravene constitutional rights, human rights conventions or gender equity laws.
Universities should especially prevent contraventions of gender equality laws, it said.
It can reasonably be expected that students would have taken into consideration the words used in the question and the logic represented by “one man, one woman” when writing their responses, the court said.
If their responses did not follow the logic in the preface, it can reasonably be determined that it would not be easy to earn a high mark, thus lowering a student’s chance of being accepted by the department, it said.
Students were required to write a response to a question that had differential treatment based on gender identity and sexual preference, it said.
The question contravened the law, the court ruled.
NTU appealed that decision to the Taipei High Administrative Court, which rejected the appeal.
Its ruling is final.
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