A group of UST students, moved by various reasons not all of which may have been committed to paper, cried up, in their Open Letter (see below), this wonderful slogan "蔑視知識、濫發學位". If we turn, for a moment, not to the accused, but to the accusers themselves, and to the fellow students around them; if we begin to detect how much anti-intellectualism there may be in these fellows, how much longing not to be taught but to be entertained, how much happy thought given to making the freshman orientation every year more resemble a club-party than anything else; if we inquire further how casually many students take their studies, leaving not a minute to reflect upon whether, compared with those poor children in the Mainland who would never have the chance to study in a university, they, our dear students at UST, have the right so to while away three or four precious years in merry-making, or slogan-crying; if we, finally, assess how much the degree-candidates have learnt, how many important figures in any discipline heard of, how many books read, with how much confidence can they present themselves to the world as university graduates, learned boys and girls; if we take all these into account, inspecting FAIRLY what is happening now on campus, identifying as well those who do study hard and treasure the opportunity society has given them, as those not: then, shall we not wonder, how many university degrees handed out each year are REALLY deserved by the recipients?
But then, over so many years have we never heard of one single open letter, written by a UST student or a group of them, published in a widely circulating newspaper, which puts this QUESTION; and puts it in a tone anywhere comparable to that in which our present specimen likes to indulge itself. The lovely slogan, eight very unrelenting characters in a row; has any UST student ever publicly applied it to the bachelor-degree recipients? So well-versed in manifesto-writing, why not write one as well on a rather immediate object, their fellow students, past and present?
I then must challenge as well the drafters of the Open Letter, as the undersigned therein, to hold up the same slogan and standard, and answer the question above in full conscience. Should one find it truly undeserving to confer a degree upon this or that student, or a whole cohort of them, as at UST as elsewhere, speak up, and publicly pronounce the judgment. And then we shall come to know, whether the accusers are just, as well to themselves, as to the accused.
Appendix: The Open Letter
http://www.inmediahk.net/public/article?item_id=165515&group_id=53