The National Taiwan University (NTU) Student Association yesterday issued an apology on Facebook, after a student raised a banner at an event that was deemed hateful toward indigenous people.
The association has designated this month as “free speech month,” during which students are invited to hang banners on campus to have their messages heard.
One student’s banner used a play on an idiom meaning “to be very angry” (huo mao san zhang, 火冒三丈), in reference to a government policy that grants indigenous students an extra 35 percent in an evaluation system that exempts some students from admission tests when applying to universities.
Photo: CNA
In their description of the banner submitted to the association, the student who made the banner wrote that “special privileges granted to indigenous peoples are an example of the government’s tyranny over the ‘people of the plains.’”
A group of indigenous students on Friday held a protest, where they called the banner’s message “discriminatory” and demanded an apology.
Another banner called for a ban on blood donations from gay men, which similarly resulted in complaints of discrimination.
The association yesterday said it had been negligent in organizing the event, as it had not created a mechanism to identify and prevent hate speech.
It said one mistake it later identified was that banners were not designed for their creators to explain their message in better detail.
The purpose of the event was to promote public discussion, but a failure to acknowledge the interpretive gap had exacerbated the inequality of power relations between ethnic groups, it said.
“It is also a serious deficiency of the student union that it has not been able to establish a sufficiently complete mechanism to actively promote dialogue in a substantive sense,” it wrote.
In related news, two candidates on the same ticket in an NTU student election could face penalties ranging from an official reprimand to expulsion, due to crude and discriminatory language they used in their campaign platform.
NTU said the two candidates in the Department of Economics’ student association elections had been referred to the university’s Gender Equality Committee over their offensive policy proposals, which were posted on the student association’s Facebook page.
Among the appeals in the students’ platform were statements such as “LGBTQ people and dogs are not allowed to play the online game Arena of Valor in the association’s office,” “Those who graduate without a boyfriend or girlfriend must be surgically sterilized,” and “People who have a body mass index of more than 20 will be prohibited from taking an elevator.”
The remarks caused a strong public backlash, including from the minister of education, prompting the candidates to apologize and suspend their election campaign on Sunday.
According to NTU, after receiving a case referral, the committee must decide within 20 days whether to hear it.
If it does accept the case, the committee assigns it to a working group to complete an investigation within two months, which it then submits, along with its recommended punishment, to NTU’s Student Rewards and Disciplinary Committee.
Actor Darren Wang (王大陸) was sentenced to six months in prison, commutable to a fine, by the New Taipei District Court today for contravening the Personal Data Protection Act (個人資料保護法) in a case linked to an alleged draft-dodging scheme. Wang allegedly paid NT$3.6 million (US$114,380) to an illegal group to help him evade mandatory military service through falsified medical documents, prosecutors said. He transferred the funds to Chen Chih-ming (陳志明), the alleged mastermind of a draft-evasion ring, although he lost contact with him as he was already in detention on fraud charges, they said. Chen is accused of helping a
SECURITY: Starlink owner Elon Musk has taken pro-Beijing positions, and allowing pro-China companies to control Taiwan’s critical infrastructure is risky, a legislator said Starlink was reluctant to offer services in Taiwan because of the nation’s extremely high penetration rates in 4G and 5G services, the Ministry of Digital Affairs said yesterday. The ministry made the comments at a meeting of the legislature’s Transportation Committee, which reviewed amendments to Article 36 of the Telecommunications Management Act (電信管理法). Article 36 bans foreigners from holding more than 49 percent of shares in public telecommunications networks, while shares foreigners directly and indirectly hold are also capped at 60 percent of the total, unless specified otherwise by law. The amendments, sponsored by Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Ko
The eastern extension of the Taipei MRT Red Line could begin operations as early as late June, the Taipei Department of Rapid Transit Systems said yesterday. Taipei Rapid Transit Corp said it is considering offering one month of free rides on the new section to mark its opening. Construction progress on the 1.4km extension, which is to run from the current terminal Xiangshan Station to a new eastern terminal, Guangci/Fengtian Temple Station, was 90.6 percent complete by the end of last month, the department said in a report to the Taipei City Council's Transportation Committee. While construction began in October 2016 with an
NON-RED SUPPLY: Boosting the nation’s drone industry is becoming increasingly urgent as China’s UAV dominance could become an issue in a crisis, an analyst said Taiwan’s drone exports to Europe grew 41.7-fold from 2024 to last year, with demand from Ukraine’s fight against Russian aggression the most likely driver of growth, a study showed. The Institute for Democracy, Society and Emerging Technology (DSET) in a statement on Wednesday said it found that many of Taiwan’s uncrewed aerial vehicle (UAV) sales were from Poland and the Czech Republic. These countries likely transferred the drones to Ukraine to aid it in its fight against the Russian invasion that started in 2022, it said. Despite the gains, Taiwan is not the dominant drone exporter to these markets, ranking second and fourth
RSS