0 Page 16 -Thursday, September 10, 1981-The Michigan Daily Death of ex- 'U' student stirs international row By JOHN ADAM Last July an incident halfway around the world sparked a long-submerged problem into a broiling public confron- tation here at the University. The alleged murder in Taiwan of a former University Ph.D. student made news across the country and brought two basic groups - the Chinese Nationalists and the native Taiwanese - into a mud-slinging feud here on campus as well as in many other areas. ASSISTANT PROF. Chen Wen-Chen, a statistics student who worked most recently at Carnegie-Mellon University in Pennsylvania after leaving Ann Ar- b.or, was found dead July 3 in Taipei, Taiwan. The cause of Chen's death was not apparent, though several sources said they believed his death was "politically motivated." Earlier reports from the rIationalist Chinese government in Taiwan said Chen might have commit- ted suicide. A subsequent autopsy questioned that, and the matter was put under further investigation by the Taiwan government. Communities of at least three major college campuses - the University of Minnesota, Carnegie-Mellon Univer- sity, and the University of Michigan - were directly affected by the mysterious death of Chen, and the wor- ds "secret agents" surfaced in many conversations about the incident. WHETHER CHEN was politically ac- tive against the ruling Kuomintang (KMT) government of Taiwan is debatable. His faculty advisor at the University, Statistics Prof. Bruce Hill, doubted Chen would have had enough time for political activities. "He was an outstanding student - the best that I'd seen in statistics in 21 years," said Hill. He added 'that with Chen's involvement in research and with school work, Chen would have been too busy for any political ac- tivities. However, in a move which a friend of Chen's said he later regretted, the for- mer University graduate student came to The Michigan Daily along with a group of Taiwanese students five years ago to reveal the names of suspected KMT agents working at the University. BECAUSE OF a lack of evidence, the newspaper decided not to publish the information. Friends of Chen deny that this incident had any bearing on his alleged murder. Yet some students here claim, as does Carnegie-Mellon President Richard Cyert, that there are KMT agents in the student community keeping track of the activities of Taiwanese students and reporting any "deviations" back to Taipei. A similar situation surfaced at the University of Minnesota, where a for- mer sociology student, Rita Yeh, was recently convicted in Taiwan "for spreading Communist ideology in microfilms and notebooks." She was found guilty in Jan. 1981 and sentenced to 14 years imprisonment, according to Mark Perrusquia of The Minnesota Daily, the campus newspaper. Perrusquia said people have been ac- cusing the Chinese Nationalists of spying for many years, and added that once it was brought to the attention of a University of Minnesota Vice-president but "they couldn't make a case" because of the nature of allegations and the complainants' fear of being iden- tified. NEVERTHELESS, when guaranteed anonymity, the Taiwanese independen- ts are prolific speakers against the government which one student descr- tibed as "worse than a dictatorship." . "Dictatorship is too good a word for them," he said. The group of eight students, made'up of ethnic Taiwanese as well as Chinese, said they were sure the government was involved in the death of Chen. When asked what advan- tage the government would have in killing Chen, several persons respon- ded, each with the same reason. "There is a saying in Chinese," said one member from Hong Kong, "when you kill one, you can warn 100." Another said, "It's a warning to every student here - don't open your mouth, just keep it shut." THE GROUP of Taiwanese said they had no doubt there are secret KMT agents at the University, most of whom they said work through a campus group called the "free China Student Association." AN OFFICIAL ofthe Free China Student Association, Shien-Ming Chuong, flatly denied the allegations that there are KMT agents in his 200- member organization. "That's ridiculous," he said of the suggested link. Eighty-three members of the FCSA, in a letter to the Daily, denounced charges that agents of the Chinese Nationalist Government in Taiwan were working in their organization. They said they trusted their gover- nment to deduce the truth about Chen's Death. The letter criticized the newspaper article about the incident as biased and irresponsible. It denounced history Prof. Ernest Young's portrayal of the government in Taiwan as a one-party authoritarian state. (Young works at the University's Center for Chinese Studies). ACCORDING TO Young, there are two main ethnic groups on the Asian island: the native Taiwanese, con- stituting 86 percent of the population; and the refugee Chinese Nationalists, constituting about 13 percent of the country's population. The Chinese Nationalists run the main government. The native Taiwanese want a representative government with proportionate power, Young said. Taiwan has been under martial law since 1949, and is in gross violation of human rights, according to an Amnesty International Report. To share or not to share Sound technology comes through again! Two recent trends in music- enjoyment will accommodate those who'd like to shut the world out, as well as those who'd like to bring it in. Daily Photo by PAUL ENGSTROM 6 U THE RUDOLF STEINER SCHOOL of Ann Arbor a Waldorf Elementary School 2796 Packard Road, Ann Arbor Enrollments for September are now being taken For 'information: Please write for free literature to: "The Rudolf Steiner SchoolAssociation of Ann Arbor," 2836 White- wood, Ann Arbor, Michigan 48104, or call: 973-0643 If no answer, please leave message at 769-4270 or 662-6398 The school does not discriminate in regard to race, sex, nat'l origin, etc. Administration launches redirection of 'U, mri 'w W dob. _/ i i i rwi i' i i "MW Pft/ i IMW 7W i i ' 'RW (Continued from Page 1) process by which programs are reviewed for possible cuts, claiming the administration has not seriously con- sidered the input of faculty members or students in deciding whether a program should be cut or eliminated. THese critics have insisted that the University administration should allow more students to participate in the several review committees that examine a targeted program or depar- tment before a final decision is made by the administration or the Regents. Still other students and faculty mem- bers (including geography department Chairman John Nytuen) have warned that the t University will impair its ability to attract top-quality students and faculty members once fear spreads that departments and programs are being axed. "I feel a lot of the things that are being done (by the administration) right now in haste because of the economic situation are going to have some very long term effects on the University," said geography graduate student Margaret Wilder after the Regents' decision to eliminate her department. She said the University is earning a poor reputation around the country for its cutbacks. . Geography department Chairman John Nystuen, who claimed the ad- ministration had "secretly targeted" his department, sharply criticized the way the administration has dealt with its budget problems. "I think it's a mistake that's going to plague the University for some time," he said. The administration has "made a spectacle of itself by turning on part of its own organization," he added. BUT THE administration, noting that students are transient and often ill- informed on the complex issues surrounding the University budget, have chosen to limit student par- ticipation in the reviews primarily to open hearings. When students or faculty members point their fingers at. the ad- ministration, claiming that the ad- ministrators are heartlessly cutting programs and jeopardizing people's futures, the administrators are quick to point out that the redirection is all in the name of quality. If the University is to maintain is quality, they say, hard choices have to be made concerning what programs and departments are worth keeping when the money is short. "This University, like other. quality universities, is really in a constant process of change," said University President Harold Shapiro. "If you're going to have a quality educational en- vironment, you are going to have to 4WEEJUNS r change continuously over time ... That means you have to make explicit decisions about stopping a program, or restructuring a program, or redirecting a program." "THE PRIMARY force driving this redirection, if you want to call it that, is not fiscal, but, a desire to maintain a quality university, an extremely high quality university," he said recently inA* an interview. In fact, Shapiro said, even if there were no short-term fiscal constraints, the administrators would still seek to shore up the University by cutting those areas which are of inadequate quality and using the money saved to strengthen the University's outstanding programs and departments. Through such selective cutbacks, the ad- ministration claims it can create a "smaller but better" University. Following the smaller but better ap- proach, the University has decided to avoid large across-the-board cuts, which they say merely make excellent programs mediocre and good programs poor. Instead of cutting quality in- discriminately, the administration will cut its weak programs dramatically, while sparing its strong departments any major surgery. "IN ORDER to maintain the programs that are excellent, I think we have to reduce the scope of the Univer- sity," says Vice President for Academic Affairs Bill Frye, one of the most influential administrators in deciding where the ax will fall. "An across-the-board cut," says Shapiro, "is only appropriate when you think what you've got is exactly right, that you have exactly the right distribution of efforts - therefore the best way to get smaller is just to pull everything down just a little bit. I don't make that claim," he asserts. "I don't think what we have is per- fect. I don't think the strength in the various academic departments is uniformly the same quality. And so I think some judgement is called for." E #° I V EXCITEMENT 9 TRAVEL i°r * RESPONSIBILITY INVESTIGATE THE NAVY ALTERNATIVE Scholarships, Available CONTACT: Navy ROTC Lt. Rob Machala 764-1499 NI&N PRICES Running From High Prices? NOW THERE'S A SOLUTION! The Student Savings Shield! 0o Bass Weejuns:a The original loafers IT I S$S BEARERS I I flCkdTW,.d 1CEG I SSBrrs u_ 1 . , 1..._..... I_ _ _ ... _ .C L - -. 1 - . Hiandisewn construction. . Q'Pndarv comf tort and dulrability ~R~ ' . J.pa of ul Ci 3 1 i lii