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AN INTRODUCTION TO MY ORDEAL A UBC
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My background
My name is Lucio Munoz, I am a male Spanish speaking Latino American immigrant
student borne, raised, and educated originally in El Salvador(I am an
Agricultural Engineer 1984); and then just before coming to UBC I did a
Master's Degree in Agricultural economics(1988) at the Ohio State University,
Columbus, Ohio, USA.
In both occasions I was among the top of my class and with excellent
grades which would allowed me quick entry in almost any university of my choice
to pursue a PhD degree, just as it happened at the University of British
Columbia where I was accepted full time into a PhD program in Forestry
Economics in 1993 within weeks of formally applying.
A summary of my ordeal at The University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada:
From September 1993 to now, I have been subjected to a process of
systematic institutional discrimination and unequal treatment at UBC.
Knowledge of my personal characteristics such as being a Spanish speaking
landed immigrant student from El Salvador, and the expectations that immigrant
students are easy targets if abused or neglected or dismissed due to
immigration or economic or personal or family factors appears to be, directly
or indirectly, the factors that created an attractive environment of
carelessness and disrespect for my academic program, funding needs,
professional future, and my family future and the future of my kids:
- among faculty members in
the faculty of forestry who mismanaged two of my PhD theses in less than 3
years without any sense of accountability(1993-1996) while seeking the
benefits of their personal/institutional self-interest and goals and among
those like the Dean of Forestry and the Graduate Student Advisor in
Forestry who knew what had happened to me and who had the duty to protect
me, but chose not to help me;
- among bureaucrats in the
faculty of graduate studies who received, investigated, corroborated, and
accepted responsibility for my complaints, but failed on purpose to act or
enforce their ruling on my favor simply to protect the reputation of the
faculties and individuals they found at fault;
- among bureaucrats in the
faculty of forestry and in the faculty of graduate studies and others
faculties who colluded to lie and/or mislead through illegally using my
personal information in their hands to hide from outsiders what all of
them have done to me and my academic program or to prevent me from
formalizing my second PhD thesis outside forestry;
- among members of the UBC
Senate who at the end of my 1998 academic appeal hearing concluded that
they had no choice to correct UBC wrong-doing, but to grant me the PhD
degree, an action which according to binding academic appeal rules was the
only fair remedy available at that moment to them to cure the wrong
endured and which they accepted took place, yet instead they dismissed my
appeal. A bias action taken by the UBC Senate in a bid to escape
accountability and to cover up the systematic discrimination inflicted on
me as they were expecting this landed immigrant from El Salvador to be an
easy target for abuse due to the high cost of staying for long-periods of
time fighting for your student and human rights. They had copy of my
completed PhD thesis in their hands(together with supporting and
independent academic opinions), which was completed under a very deep
biased academic and research environment and at my own cost, yet they
simply ignored it;
- among high ranking UBC
officials, including the President of UBC, Dr. Martha Piper, who fully
knowing how much all levels of decision-making and redress and remedial
action had failed me tolerated such systematic abuse and avoided twice to
intervene; and
- among officials in the BC
Ombudsman's office who apparently as a favor to UBC avoided several times
within two years(1998-2000) to carry out a full and independent
investigation of the appropriateness of the 1998 decision of the UBC
Senate Committee on academic appeals to dismissed my appeal even when
corroborating through several independent academic opinions that UBC owed
me a PhD degree, and even when knowing UBC had provided to it false and/or
misleading statements and information and it had shown lack of cooperation
to it. Hence, the BC Ombudsman dismissed my complaint against UBC simply
to avoid in the end having to reccomend UBC to grant me my PhD degree as
it had promised UBC in writting from the beginning of the investigation
that it was not going to make such a reccomendation, and I did not know
about it until later when documents UBC released under Freedom of
Information Request(FOI requests) came into my hands.
- among officials in the BC
Human Rights Commission's office both in Vancouver and in Victoria who
apparently as a favor to UBC avoided several times within two
years(2000-2002) to carry out a full and independent investigation of the
appropriateness of the 1998 decision of the UBC Senate Committee on
academic appeals to dismiss my appeal even when having evidence showing
that the BC Ombudsman had already corroborated by 2000 through several
independent academic opinions that UBC owed me a PhD degree since 1998.
After having the case for two years and after receiving evidence that UBC
had recently blocked or lost academic Journal donations I personally made
to the Koerner's library to get my academic work and publications known at
UBC, the BC Human Rights Commission claimed that I had complained too late
to it, fully knowing that my academic ordeal at UBC AND MY CONFLICT WITH
IT IS STILL ONGOING TODAY and knowing that one of its officers in charge,
Ms. Martha Rans, had just before the dismissal of this UBC Compliant
requested to me and to my legal adivisor, to name a law student to work on
the case with her and this was actively being done at the moment of
dismissal. I appealed these decisions internally, but the BC Human Rights
Commission rejected my appeals both in Vancouver and in Victoria, in my
opinion, to protect its officers. So the BC Human Rights Commission
directly or indirectly has discriminated against me and acted in favour of
UBC;
- among officials in the BC
Human Rights's office in Vancouver and in Victoria who apparently as a
favor to the BC Ombudsman and to UBC avoided for almost two years to carry
out a full and independent investigation of the appropriateness of the
2000 decision of the BC Ombudsman to dismiss my complaint against UBC in a
way clearly and beyond reasonable doubt, academic and otherwise in my
opinion, unfair and discriminatory as the evidence the BC Ombudsman had
collected showed that they had to recommend UBC to grant the academic
standing that fitted the circumstances even thought it was not a binding
decision on UBC. To make unfairness to the maximum, the BC Human Rights
Commission heard this case, explained me how to complaint, formally
received the written complaint from me as suggested, reassigned the
complaint to another officer, never discussed nor communicated to me that
this complaint had been allocated to another officer, dismissed the
compliant when I asked the new officer in charge for one update about it
as nothing had been done about it for such a long time and I did not know
who actually had it for serving it, and rejected my formal appeals to
protect its officers both in Vancouver, and then in Victoria.
Pure discrimination
Both internal and external monitoring and remedial bodies and officials
colluded in their efforts to avoid granting me a PhD degree since March 1998, which
according to UBC laws and the laws of justice and the laws of fairness they
owed me, simply because they were expecting me to go away sooner or later after
dismissal/neglect as they knew from my personal information in their hands who
I am and they did not expect me to be around for so long trying to force UBC to
respect its own laws.
What UBC has done to me is simply unfair, it chose to protect the
abusers, specific individuals(most of whom either resigned or retired after I
complained) and faculties and it chose to punish the victim still more, ME,
even after formally accepting blame for the abused I have endured at UBC, in
writing.
Sadly, I am not the only Spanish speaking student being abused or that
has been abused at UBC, but I may be the one UBC has dragged on the longest in
a bid to discourage me and my research or get rid of me and my completed PhD
thesis. I am convinced that the courts of the land will sooner or later put a
stop to this discriminatory process and provide me appropriate redress to cure
not just the material damage suffered so far, but immaterial damages too.
Changing conflict of interest policies
after the facts
When presenting my complaint to the UBC Senate I documented how specific
individual and faculties were acting in an environment of conflict of interest
and committment placing their individual and faculty self-interest over their
academic, research and funding responsibilities to me. I requested access to
information collected under conflict of interest policy 97 in place since 1992
and related to the non-university activities which could corroborate my
allegations when appealing to the UBC Senate yet access was denied before,
during and after the academic appeal hearing.
Even the UBC Senate chose not to take a look at this information to have
a more complete picture of the forces that led to the mismanagement of two of
my Ph.D. thesis in the faculty of forestry and that led to the blocking of the
formalization of my completed second Ph.D. thesis on Deforestation in Central America
outside the faculty of forestry.
Access to information collected under policy 97 was denied to me even
when I appealed to the Freedom of Information Commissioner. I argued in general
terms that I had the right to access that information since it was collected to
protect students from conflict of interest/committment when the non-university
activities take priority over the academic rights/program of students. UBC
argued in writing and in general that the information under policy 97 was
collected to protect UBC, not the student.
In the end, the commissioner in general allowed UBC not to release the
requested information to me because it was not completely clear in the policy
guidelines if that information should be released to students facing difficulties
at UBC. BUT THE FOI COMMISSIONER REQUESTED UBC IN GENERAL TO CLARIFY THE POLICY
BY INDICATING CLEARLY IF THE INFORMATION GATHERED UNDER POLLICY 97 IS TO
PROTECT UBC OR THOSE DISCLOSING INFORMATION OR STUDENTS OR ALL THREE PARTS AT
THE SAME TIME.
Instead of making this simple clarification to policy 97, UBC, through
the office of Mr. Dennis Pavlich, is proposing practically a new policy 97, one
in which students who are affected by conflict of interest and conflict of commitments
while at UBC can not access that information to seek proper internal redress
when solving problems or appealing decisions fueled by such conflicts.
See page 6-8 of the UBC REPORTS of February 03, 2005 where the details of the new
policy are listed and comments from the public requested. Nobody has yet
contacted me to learn from what happened to me at UBC and reflect this
situation in drafting the clarifications to Policy 97 requested by the FOI
Commissioner.
To read the details of my ordeal at UBC go
to ARTICLES PUBLISHED RELATED TO MY ORDEAL
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WOULD YOU LIKE TO HELP ME?,
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When the abuser and the judge can work in unison
there is no room for justice, but
there is room for planting
the seeds of corruption.
(Lucio Muņoz)
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