I am loyal to my alma mater. She is good to me. She gave me
free education and also provides me with paid work from time to time.
A refreshing aspect is the culture of my faculty where the
only description I have is that of egalitarianism. It does not matter what your
title happens to be, you stand on the merits of your ideas and that is where
you are judged. Even those more senior
than you treat you as an equal. They do
not treat you like a kid. I remember one
particular seminar when our dean spoke. As typical there is Q & A at the
end of a public lecture. I was impressed of how the dean was allowed to suffer
due to the cogency of the questions thrown at him, even by junior
lecturers. No one is sacred. No one is
treated like a god or a guru.
In university world rankings, my university used to be among
the top 50 but lately she has dropped to the 60s group. Of all the universities
here, she has the most controversial history.
This year we are commemorating the 10th year
anniversary of the shootings that happened in 2002. That year a disturbed Chinese
student open fired in his economics class. From memory, he killed two of his
classmates. A couple of professors went in to subdue him. That is probably the
most significant incident but there is another one.
Around that year too, the Vice-Chancellor of my university
was forced to resign. The VC is like your CEO, while the Chancellor is like
your President. The first is like the Prime Minister while the second is like
your Head of State having more a ceremonial role. Why did he have to resign?
The story went that our ex-VC was guilty of plagiarizing
several times. The first couple of times
were when he was not even our VC yet and they happened 20 years before coming
to our university! One might say that happened in the past it should not count.
Not so. The third incident was discovered by one of our professors while
reading the VC’s book on the connection of drinking with alcoholism. This book was also published many years
before he stepped into our university. The ex-VC authored his book but he
copied some sections word for word even punctuation from another book. It was
so appalling that the professor who discovered this labeled the act as an act
of serial plagiarism. In the end none of the Council members (Board of
Trustees) needless to say, he was asked to resign.
In academia, you can
really end your career by one act of sloppy or lazy referencing. It does not
seem to be the case in the world of Internet theology blogging. It seems church people and theologians have a
very poor standard compared to academia.
