In February, a student at Taichung Municipal Feng Yuan Senior High School killed himself, allegedly after long-term and collective bullying by school officials. Seven of those officials have been reassigned to another school by the Taichung Education Bureau, while the school’s director of student affairs was suspended.
Many consider the school’s investigation and report on the suicide a farce. First, it concluded that the school officials’ counseling and disciplining of the student did not constitute bullying. The report also included a questionable survey, in which five students were chosen from each class — but not from the class of the student who died — to answer whether the discipline was reasonable.
Misconduct by the student affairs director should have been considered a serious matter, but he only received a demerit from the school.
The bureau said that the report and the punishment for the school officials were unacceptable and inappropriate.
On Friday, a professional review committee was organized to review the report and the actions of the student affairs director. It determined that the conduct of the director contravened Article 18 of the Teachers’ Act (教師法) and they should be penalized in accordance with the regulation.
The committee said the director should receive a one-year suspension.
However, the Humanistic Education Foundation said that a suspension was insufficient. After a year, the director would be able to return to the school without facing any supervision or assessment.
Dismissal of the director would be a more appropriate way to handle the issue, as they would then have to compete with other candidates when seeking a new teaching position, and pass a screening process before they could be hired.
What is more perplexing is that the school’s report confirmed that “improper discipline” had occurred, but that the student had not been singled out. Therefore, the implication of the report is that students at Taichung Municipal Feng Yuan Senior High School are often subjected to demerits, body searches, intimidation, threats and discriminatory verbal abuse by school officials.
Even for a mentally mature adult with abundant social experience, this could be too much to handle. How would a high-school student be able to handle it? Does anyone believe the student killed himself simply out of the blue?
Moreover, on Thursday, Taichung Deputy Mayor Alicia Wang (王育敏) said that the city government would not accept the school’s report and demanded that it explain why the case was not considered bullying. Soon after, the school suspended the director for a year. This came as rapidly as thunder, and many wondered if the whole thing had been planned.
Under Article 3 of the Ministry of Education’s Regulations Governing Prevention and Control of Bullying on Campuses (校園霸凌防制準則), bullying is defined as any situation in which a person or group of people use speech, writing, images, signs, physical gestures, electronic communication or other means to directly or indirectly belittle, exclude, mistreat, harass or tease another person. The target of this harassment would be in a hostile and unfriendly environment, experiencing psychological, physical or financial harm, and could not safely study and participate in school activities.
What happened to the student at Taichung Municipal Feng Yuan Senior High School is extremely unfortunate. If the student’s suicide is considered unrelated to bullying, the ministry and other agencies should redefine “bullying.”
Chang Huey-por is a former president of National Changhua University of Education.
Translated by Emma Liu
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