National Tsing Hua University secretary-general Lee Min (李敏) yesterday confirmed that Sunflower movement leader Chen Wei-ting (陳為廷), who had been a sociology graduate student, had been expelled by the university due to his academic and classroom performance.
A faculty member of the university’s Institute of Sociology said that a faculty committee reviews all students in the institute’s master of arts program after their first year.
After conducting the review over the summer, the committee decided on Sept. 2 that Chen’s academic performance failed to meet the required standard and he was informed of his expulsion that evening, the faculty member said.
Chen appealed the decision and the committee reconvened on Thursday last week to reconsider his case, with Chen invited to the meeting in accordance with the university’s guidelines.
However, the committee decided to uphold the original decision, the faculty member said.
Lee said that the university has academic standards it must enforce, citing as an example that it expels those undergraduates who fail more than half their classes in a semester, while graduate students must meet departmental requirements such as turning in thesis abstract revisions and meeting course passage requirements.
In a Facebook posting yesterday, Chen wrote that he had been “in poor academic shape” over the past year, with multiple absences and missed assignments.
He said that during the hearing, committee members asked him to devise a plan to improve his academic performance, but he told them that his “mind was not on my school work.”
The professors also told him to “prioritize the things you want to do,” he said.
Chen thanked the university’s faculty “for many years of care,” and said that he would not contest the decision any further.
One of Chen’s former professors, Huang Shih-yi (黃世宜), who is currently visiting Switzerland, yesterday wrote on Facebook that Chen should be “congratulated” for being expelled, as Taiwan’s “superstitious belief in schools and diplomas” is responsible for putting “bloodless and tearless” people in power, including “a Hannah Arendt expert, a university president and a Harvard PhD.”
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