This morning, I woke up half-awake and was about to start reading The Star newspaper (28 June 2008), saw an interesting picture that immediately got me fully-awake. The picture showing someone whom I have personally met few years back. Without hesitation, I turned to page 18 of the local news for the full coverage.
This piece of news was reported as if it is a sad piece of news. However, in my personal opinion, this is indeed one of the best news to have happened in the higher education sector of Malaysia. A Vice-Chancellor's (VC) service in a state-owned university was terminated.
This VC has previously "laboured" as Deputy VC at the oldest university in the country while I was still a student there. In his job capacity to handle students' affairs, I have the "bad luck" of meeting him personally. During my second year, I was heading a cultural and sports delegation to visit Beijing. My proposal was rejected twice and I have personally made an appointment to meet with him to find out exactly what went wrong. The so-called DVC was 30 minutes late for the appointment and even before allowing me to finish my first sentence trying to explain to him about the project, he "raised" his voice and agitatedly said why waste his time by talking about projects that had been rejected. He went on to say that the committee in project is not multi-racial. (I really cannot understand - 20 member delegation with 8 malays, 8 chinese and 4 indians as not multi-racial?)
Due to the multitude of problems given by this person, the project was shelved. Two years later, a junior of mine, took up the project and send in the same proposal and the project was approved. The reason could probably be that I'm a Chinese and he's a Malay. Probably, he just cannot accept a delegation led by Chinese to visit China.
To cut it short, he is an extremely racist person, who single-handedly transformed the so-called political landscape of the oldest university into an extreme racial-based segregation. To sum it up, he is a true-blue political creature.
I could also clearly remembered his first meeting with students in my residential college when he took up the DVC position. He spoke to passionately about internationalisation and his "rich" experience of studying in one of the Ivy League university. What was striking indeed was his inability to speak fluent English. Initially, I would have given him the benefit of doubts but my subsequent unfortunate experience of attending some of the events as student leader, fully affirmed my conviction that he simply can't speak English fluently. For someone who have difficulties to speak English fluently to lead the internationalisation of students, we can understand why internationalisation in the country's oldest university is still at such infancy stage.
If someone that truly loves the universities in Malaysia and understand the problems these institutions are going through, I am certain you would have agreed with me that such a person will do more harm than good for the higher education of the country. Indeed this is the best News of the Day!
This is just a personal opinion.
This piece of news was reported as if it is a sad piece of news. However, in my personal opinion, this is indeed one of the best news to have happened in the higher education sector of Malaysia. A Vice-Chancellor's (VC) service in a state-owned university was terminated.
This VC has previously "laboured" as Deputy VC at the oldest university in the country while I was still a student there. In his job capacity to handle students' affairs, I have the "bad luck" of meeting him personally. During my second year, I was heading a cultural and sports delegation to visit Beijing. My proposal was rejected twice and I have personally made an appointment to meet with him to find out exactly what went wrong. The so-called DVC was 30 minutes late for the appointment and even before allowing me to finish my first sentence trying to explain to him about the project, he "raised" his voice and agitatedly said why waste his time by talking about projects that had been rejected. He went on to say that the committee in project is not multi-racial. (I really cannot understand - 20 member delegation with 8 malays, 8 chinese and 4 indians as not multi-racial?)
Due to the multitude of problems given by this person, the project was shelved. Two years later, a junior of mine, took up the project and send in the same proposal and the project was approved. The reason could probably be that I'm a Chinese and he's a Malay. Probably, he just cannot accept a delegation led by Chinese to visit China.
To cut it short, he is an extremely racist person, who single-handedly transformed the so-called political landscape of the oldest university into an extreme racial-based segregation. To sum it up, he is a true-blue political creature.
I could also clearly remembered his first meeting with students in my residential college when he took up the DVC position. He spoke to passionately about internationalisation and his "rich" experience of studying in one of the Ivy League university. What was striking indeed was his inability to speak fluent English. Initially, I would have given him the benefit of doubts but my subsequent unfortunate experience of attending some of the events as student leader, fully affirmed my conviction that he simply can't speak English fluently. For someone who have difficulties to speak English fluently to lead the internationalisation of students, we can understand why internationalisation in the country's oldest university is still at such infancy stage.
If someone that truly loves the universities in Malaysia and understand the problems these institutions are going through, I am certain you would have agreed with me that such a person will do more harm than good for the higher education of the country. Indeed this is the best News of the Day!
This is just a personal opinion.
