Voice of Will: Leaving China

2006-06-06 - 11:49 a.m.
Well I haven't written in a while, and you all deserve an update.

 We have been asked to leave SIAS for "academic" reasons. Under that auspice it means we are bad teachers. NOT! We have found out that the dean of the BGS department, and 2 other department deans went to the owner of the school and threatened to quit if Christine and I were not removed. Well these deans have been at the school for about 5 years, and it came down to personal vendettas and we have been asked to move on. These vendettas come from the extreme chrsitian right wing who want to use SIAS as a base for their "mission." If you want something scary go to www.plugintoyours.com and read it. These are the people completely responsible for academic hiring for the next couple of years at SIAS. There is absolutely no way a buddhist, a mormon, a catholic, jews, or muslims will go there to come to this school. Now that seems like an EEOC violation, as well as a violation of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. I may have to check into an attorney to look in to this in the states. SIAS GROUP is incoroprated in LA, and therefore they have to abide by American Laws for employment practices.

I love this place, but I really hate the people who are hypocrites and lie about why they are here, and for what. I will miss my students, and my job, but I won't miss the rest of this.

This leads to the second point. We are going to Tokyo next year. Christine has accepted a fantastic job from Toyo University. They have an international partnership with the University of Montana Missoula, and they send students to the University of Montana for masters degrees, and christine will be an intensive oral english prep class for these students. She will have 5 collegues who are all working in the same program. They pay about 2x what Christine makes here, they will pay for 42 square meters of floor space in an apartment (we need about 65, so we will pay the difference, but it is TOKYO man!!) We are working on the Visas now, and will be leaving for Tokyo on about August 1st (classes start September 1st.)

This leads to the third point. What do we do between then and now? Our Visa's in china expire on June 15th, (we are trying to extend them, but they are being very difficult) and even if we do extend them we can only stay until july 15th. We still have to pass about a month somewhere. So we are probably going back to the states for a month or so, then off to Tokyo.