Justice and disclosure of information on recent CSSACAM incidents
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The following is my email to the Junior Proctor and I need your support. Please sign it with a cam or cantab email.
Dear Junior Proctor,
First of all, I would like to express my gratitude towards your recent intervention into the rather chaotic affairs of CSSA in the hope of solving the dispute. Many of us—unlike some people, I don’t want to claim ‘majority’ or ‘minority’ without trustworthy investigation—felt relieved when we heard that you summoned both parties and rescheduled the general election. However, the relief was short-lived because rumors began to spread again soon after Miss Feifan Chang sent another disturbing email to every subscriber of the CSSA mailing list. I have translated important parts of that email and attached them with this letter.
From my perspective, rumors, confusion and disturbance among the ordinary members of CSSA, such as myself, stem from not knowing what is really going on. We waited anxiously and hopefully for the results of your meeting with Feifan Chang and Bill Chen on Thursday, only to find disappointedly that your statement contained no explanation of the situation or reasons for holding a general election. Is it just for the so-called purpose of ‘unite and move forward’? Or is it because what happened in July was indeed something unconstitutional? Did you call off the scheduled election on November 4 because it was illegitimate? Or did you postpone it just to make sure it is fair? The answers to all these questions are so important that I can’t see any reason for withholding such information from the public. I believe we need to and deserve to know the truth now more than ever before. Only in this way can we move forward as a united community.
Having been in Cambridge since 2006, I have never been part of the CSSA committee and remained rather peripheral to the organization. Yet the events in the past few months were so influential among the Chinese students’ communities (not only in Cambridge but also in the UK because of twitter and facebook)that I decide to speak up.
I fully understand that you must be very busy with your research and teaching, and please accept my apologies for taking up your time. However, I sincerely hope you will take the time to read the selected parts from Miss Feifan Chang’s email. As a Ph.D. student researching social sciences from the perspective of discourse analysis, the language or discourse she used (in this and other emails) appears significantly misleading to me. With the cssacam.org website being suspended, the CSSA mailing list become the sole means for passing on information to all members. I seriously doubt if it is fair that only Miss Feifan Chang has the privilege to manage the mailing list.
I have to admit that I have not written this email in the calmest state of mind. If I have been offensive or too assertive at times, please accept my apologies.
Best regards,
Sihua Liang
(4th year Ph.D. candidate in Education)
Part translation of Miss Feifan Chang’s recent email (I have kept the translation as literal as possible. Words in capitalization are my emphasis.).
(1) 首先，原本个别同学计划于今日召开的越过学联整体而发起的“选举”活动，已被剑桥大学校方出面制止。 www.cssacam.org已经被要求停止运行。
(First of all, the ‘election' originally scheduled to take place today by A VERY SMALL NUMBER of people, which BYPASSES CSSA AS A WHOLE, has been CHECKED/CANCELLED by the university. www.cssacam.org has been requested to stop.)
(2) 近几个月来，各种谣传、争议和攻击已经严重影响了学联声誉和团结形象，我们经过过去的3-4个月的努力不能使个别同学回过头来团结一致…反而一系列事件后，更是要越过学联整体，越过校方，而去发起个人行为的“选举”，离学校的要求越走越远。
(In the past few months, various rumors, disputes and attacks have seriously affect the reputation and the image of unity of CSSA. The efforts we made in the past three to four months have failed to reunite the VERY SMALL NUMBER of people who have GONE ASTRAY…Rather, after a series of incidents, they even BYPASSED CSSA AS A WHOLE, BYPASSED THE UNIVERSITY, and launched the purely INDIVIDUAL ‘election’, departing even further from the requirements of the university.)
(3) 届时大会将邀请全体会员出席，我将带领大家积极报名参加选举，希望请大家继续支持我们为大家服务。
(We invite all members to attend the general election. I WILL LEAD all of us to actively participate in the election. I hope that you will CONTINUE TO SUPPORT US to serve you.)
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