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Call Grassroot Support For Hu Liqun's Case




Hi, everyone, the following is the message calling support to Ms. Hu Liqun's
campaign for justice. While Ms. Hu's case may appear as an individual case
to everyone of us, yet, we CSS community just CONSISTS of many INDIVIDUALS,
and each one of us is an un-separable member of our community. When one of 
our sisters are subjected to racial discrimination, the chances are, we ARE
all run the risk to be put under the same situation. When one arrogant 
school does it without facing challenge, the chances are, the other schools
may follow the suit, or just keep their discriminative regulations in place.
We Chinese here are minorities. If we fail to support ourselves, then we 
are doomed to fail together. 

Let us join hands and send our strong support by sending our signatures to
the following account

huliqun@ifcss.org

and spread out the news. It only takes a few minutes of each one of us, and 
if we can generate enough signatures, we will make a big difference. Is that
wonderful?

Sincerely Yours,

Mi Mi Sr.,

Chair, Civil Rights Commission of IFCSS
National Coordinator of CBS Incident Committee

(signed)
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 13 Oct 94 15:56:37 CDT
From: huliqun@ifcss.org (IFCSS Newsletter)
To: hua7291@xld2s0.engr.ccny.cuny.edu

Dear Editor:

I need your help in campaigning for Ms. Hu's case.  I would like
the following messages published.  Please help for the common  
good of CSS in USA. In case you want to contact me for any 
further information, here is my home phone: (313)832-4396. 

Dear fellow CSS:

Ms. Liqun Hu's battle against Ball State University's discriminatory 
policies has reached a final stage.  We need your support once again 
in this important stage.

The basic fact was that Ms. Hu was denied admission to BSU because 
BSU translated Hu's undergraduate GPA earned in P.R. China, 90.3, 
into 2.8.  Hu complained with Office for Civil Rights(OCR) of the 
U.S. Department of Education, and a settlement agreement was later 
reached between OCR and BSU.   This agreement rules that BSU has 
to discontinue their current use of translation method for foreign 
students' grades, in the mean time, the agreement states that BSU 
does not admit any discrimination.  The decision to merely discontinue 
the use of BSU's self-made scale for P.R. China does not prevent 
BSU from discriminating against applicants who earned their grades 
in Chinese colleges.  In fact, BSU still shows no sign that it is 
remorseful about its wrongdoing and that it is willing to make remedies.  
Most importantly, it still insists on refusing to use the NAFSA 
scale for P.R. China, which is a commonly accepted standard in 
the profession.

Besides all the emotional stress Ms. Hu has been through, she has 
devoted enormous amounts of time and spent considerable amounts 
of money on phone bills for this strenuous battle.  Her legal 
advisor Mr. Rongwei Cai has also devoted hundreds of hours of 
voluntary work.  Now that Mr. Cai has moved to Hongkong, he 
remains all ready for any legal help that might be needed from him.  
I wrote this message to you because I do not want to see their 
efforts wasted; I wrote this message to you because I want to 
see that truth, justice and equality will eventually triumph.

Ms. Hu has no choice but to appeal to American Civil Liberties 
Union, seeking judicial proceedings against BSU.  Ms. Hu's battle 
is not one of her own.  Please show your support by signing Hus' 
letter of appeal to ACLU.  To sign, send your name, address and 
phone number to the following E-mail address. (The informatiion you 
give will only be used for supporting Ms. Hu.  This is my promise)

        huliqun@ifcss.org

Sincerely yours,
Zhong Ling, Council member, IFCSS

Attachment: Ms. Hu's letter to ACLU

American Civil Liberties Union:

I have been a victim of discriminatory policy held by Ball State
University (BSU) in Indiana. It is the first discrimination case
regarding higher educational institution's policy on converting
foreign grade in American history. To seek truth and justice, I
need help from you.

I am a thirty-four years old female permanent resident. I came
from People's Republic of China in 1988. Currently, I am
studying clinical psychology at Pepperdine University in Los
Angeles.

The following is a brief description of the case.

In fall of 1993, I applied for admission to the clinical
psychology program at BSU. The deadline at this time for
application was already passed. The department of Psychological
Science decided to allow me to take courses in the program as a
special student and to apply for 1994's admission. At the end of
March of 1993, I was told that my application was not accepted at
that point and was on the waiting list. The department's
explanation for this decision was that my UNDERGRADUATE GPA
EARNED IN P.R. CHINA was too low, only equivalent to 2.8 on
American 4.0 scale. This conversion was done by the Center of
International Program(CIP) at BSU.

According to NAFSA(the National Association of Foreign Student
Affair)'s published scale which has been used nationwide, an
average 90.30 on 100 scale I earned at Fu-Dan University, China's
Stanford, is equivalent to about 3.5 on American 4.0 scale.
Also, my GRE(Verbal+Quantitative) is significantly above the
average of those accepted by clinical psychology program at BSU.
My graduate GPA at BSU is 3.7 and 3.9 at Pepperdine University.

To find out how and why BSU made such a conversion, on April 1,
1993, I went to CIP to inquire about its method of conversion for
students from P.R. China. Kirk Robey, the associate director of
the Admission and Sponsored Program at CIP, told me that this
scale was created by HIMSELF and it was based on STATISTICAL DATA
AND PROCEDURE, specifically, percentile. When I asked to see
such data and to learn such a procedure, he claimed: "Your
question goes too far! I am not going to change this scale today,
tomorrow, and in your lifetime."

>From then on, I as well as the Chinese Student Association at BSU
contacted the university officials at every level, including the
President, asking for the basis for the scale for P.R. China and
an re-examination of the validity of this scale. The officials
kept stating that the scale has its basis, but they failed to
provide anything to support such a claim. Moreover, officials
deliberately made many attempts to distort the issue, present
false information, and mislead the general public about the
facts.

>From July 6, 1993, the campus newspaper started to publish a
series of coverage on my case. Robey admitted to the public that
there is no database for his scale. The public and I demanded
that the university use NAFSA's scale, which BSU had the copy.
Many people signed the petition to President Worthen for re-
converting my GPA by using the national scale. However, the
university not only insisted on its scale's validity, but
continued to cover up its wrongdoing and attempted to damage my
reputation by telling untrue stories to the public.

In August of 1993, I complained with the Office for Civil Rights
of the U.S. Department of Education(OCR), regarding BSU's
discriminatory practice against me and all other Chinese
applicants. IFCSS(the Independent Federation of Chinese Students
and Scholars) later joined my complaint as a third party, and
assigned Mr. Rongwei Cai, a lawyer, as a Pro Bona legal counsellor
for the above administrative proceeding.

In March 29, 1994, OCR sent me a copy of the "Settlement
Agreement" signed by BSU official. The agreement states that BSU
will discontinue its use of the present grade equivalency scale.
But, BSU denies any discriminatory practices. Furthermore, BSU
still continues to deliberately distort the issue, and refuses to
adopt NAFSA's scale for P.R. China and to correct unfairly
altered GPAs for me and all other Chinese applicants.

No one should go through what I have been through. BSU's
intentional discriminatory practice as well as its year-long
deliberate mishandling of my case has subjected me and my family
to enormous stress.

The most serious part of the case is that BSU's discriminatory
policy against applicants from P.R. China is intentional. BSU
has been a member of NAFSA for many years. BSU has had the
knowledge of NAFSA's scale for P.R. China and professional
principles, standards, and procedure in converting foreign grade,
but has refused to follow them. BSU did apply the national
conversion method for years, and it worked very well. However,
BSU abruptly replaced this correct method with its self-made
discriminatory scale in 1989 when the unsuccessful democratic
movement broke out in Beijing, which resulted in a drastic
lying about the basis for its self made scale.

I strongly believe that if BSU does not admit what it has done to
me and other Chinese students is wrong, it can discriminate
against others again in varying ways; also, if BSU does not use
NAFSA's scale for P.R. China, Chinese grades as well as Chinese
applicants still have no guarantee to be evaluated fairly.

The decision to merely discontinue the use of BSU's self-made
scale for P.R. China does not prevent BSU from discriminating
against applicants who earned grades in Chinese colleges.
In fact, BSU still shows no sign that it is remorseful about its
wrongdoing and that it is willing to make remedies. Most
importantly, it still insists on refusing to use NAFSA's scale
for P.R. China. The case remains unresolved. Justice is not
served yet.

I have to seek justice through judicial proceeding.

Here, I am appealing for your help.

I have all the documents on the case. I am willing to provide
the whole package to you.

Thank you for your attention. I am looking forward to hearing
from you.

Very truly yours,

Liqun Hu
Signed