I
stepped out of the barrister’s office feeling less queasy than before the
meeting. I glanced over my right shoulder, beyond to the other side of the
park on Symonds Street, and sighted a lone, park bench perched atop the grassy
knoll. I sauntered over and sat down on the wooden slabs. I could see the apple
core I had tossed, mostly eaten, lying on the leafy mulch carpet beneath the
maple tree, a disheveled layer of dead leaves that had piled up as the autumn
season dwindled slowly into an indecisive winter.
Unlike
New England, the seasons on the North Island aren’t separated by harsh
differences in temperature, in which summers can reach as high as 90 degrees
Fahrenheit and winters plunge to sub-zero. Rather, the North Island seasons are
gentler, each easing into the next, barely noticed until one steps into the
outside air and senses the chill that suddenly seeps into one’s pores.
I
checked the time on my cell phone and could see that more than an hour had
passed. Although the meeting was brief, the length of time it took to clarify
my questions was long enough to get the information I needed. My head felt much
clearer, less confused, and there was a pleasant lightness in my step. The
dark, foreboding shadow, which had begun to represent my doctorate future, gave
way to slits of rays of light, bringing optimism. The barrister reassured me
that the policies regarding academic conduct, which I had culled from various
pages of the University of Auckland website, were accurate and not dated, as
one person had said. About four weeks ago, the Graduate Centre sent me three
packets of information regarding academic standards and integrity to which doctorate
students and academic staff are to adhere.
The barrister’s reassurances informed
me that my interpretation of the statutes were correct. The document clearly
outlining the guidelines for completing and grading the PhD thesis, Statute and Guidelines for the Degree of
Doctorate of Philosophy (PhD), now contain numerous yellow highlighted
lines, bringing attention to the statues, which prove that I had followed the
rules. The university is obviously interested in producing qualified academics,
and their guidelines on the quality of the doctorate thesis are clear
testaments to the institution’s goals. However, these policies also reinforced
to me that the conduct and guidance of my committee was incorrect, that is, in
violation of the statutes. My meeting with the barrister simultaneously convinced
me that the conduct of the School of Architecture and Planning regarding my provisional
year is truly baffling.
Back
at the house now, in the room I am renting, at my desk, where I placed the
sheaths of pages containing e-mail communications between my supervisors and I dating
back to June 2013, I now read through the contents of various e-mails. My eyes
skim the communications, which refer to the contents of my research proposal, my
fingers slowly leafing through the printed pages containing the most
incriminating messages. I sight where I had submitted all the drafts of my doctorate
thesis, where I had submitted various drafts of my research proposal, where I had
explained having already included the information my committee thought should
be in the research proposal, and read through the research proposal yet again in
its different draft stages. From my readings, I could see that the same
questions had been reconciled over and over in my proposal, albeit worded and
reworded differently in order to make it easier for the reader to understand. I
could also see where their comments contradicted earlier ones. For instance, in
a February e-mail, my supervisor acknowledged reading the pertinent definitions
requested by them for clarity, but soon after in a separate e-mail, claimed
that I needed to include these same definitions in the proposal. I had never taken
out these definitions since his acknowledgement and, moreover, have been
included in the proposal since September or October last year (2013). This
communication typifies the nature of my committee’s feedback on my research
proposal over the last ten months. Keeping in mind that I wrote this proposal
using the teaching sample guidelines as well as that of the School of
Architecture and Planning, it is truly interesting to me, if not peculiar, that
despite having followed these guidelines my committee still found shortcomings
in the proposal. And yet, their feedback has not in fact improved it
considerably, either. Furthermore, from having again reviewed these comments
for the umpteenth time, I could see that these “issues” could have been
resolved in early October 2013.
In
a most recent comment, my supervisor sent readings to me to help me write the methodology
- more than a year after I had completed the draft of the methodology chapter.
I had even revised this chapter in September 2013 and got it to a point where I
was able to condense the chapter to the most relevant, if not informative, contents.
I pointed out that the methodology I selected were most appropriate for this
study (consisting of two case studies), communities that had never been researched
before on the topic of resilient food systems (and, therefore, exploratory case
study is most appropriate), and will use a combination of research tools to
obtain my data. Verification of data is a necessary part of the analysis, but
it is not necessary to enter into a lengthy discussion in the research proposal
about the points that I will be verifying. And yet, despite the work that I had
put into discussing the methodology and my application of readings, which
justify the methodology I selected to design my study, my committee decides to now
send me readings that do not really improve the methodology.
One
committee member even asked me in a recent e-mail that he does not know how I
am going to operationalise my study, although this information has been present
in the research proposal from the very beginning. Because I had first sent the
draft chapter to them on 28 June, 2013, why they are giving these readings to
me now – towards the end of my provisional year – and enquiring how I will operationalise
the field collection is baffling to me. After all, they had all of July,
August, and September 2013 to advise me on the contents of the methodology
chapter, and then again in the months, thereafter.
Over
the months of my provisional year, I noticed that this committee appeared to be
intent on having me use certain methods or theories, and even dictating the
direction of my research (in spite of the fact that neither of my committee
members have published on resilience theory or food systems), but have failed
to answer my questions of “why?” when the theory I selected and methodology I
designed were more appropriate for the purpose of understanding learning and
adaptive capacities in the food system community. Although I had explained more
than once my reason for using the learning-adaptive capacity dimension of
resilience theory and why I am using the exploratory case study to do my research,
they in turn failed to exposit their reasons to me for why they thought I
should pursue action network theory (ANT) or why I should discuss at length
triangulation (i.e. verification). They do not seem to be satisfied with the
rationales I have given, but the University of Auckland statutes support the
fact that doctorate students engage in their research independently. This aspect
of the doctorate program, after all, is part of the training to becoming a
career academic capable of independently designing and conducting research. The
nature of the feedback from my committee demonstrates to me an unwillingness to
move my provisional year forward, despite testaments to the contrary.
Since
I began openly discussing these breaches of university statutes, I began to see
the light regarding the comments made to me from other international students.
Back in August 2013, one international student told me that “they” would give
me problems, while another informed that they give many students problems. In January,
after meeting with an academic staff not connected to my department or
committee to get another perspective on the contents and organization of my
research proposal, a doctorate student from Germany told me that he has been
enrolled in his provisional year almost two years and still has not received
permission to leave for his fieldwork. And then, last month, a person at the
Botany library informed me about a man from Chile, who was invited to do his
PhD at Auckland University. After completing components of his research, following
his return from his fieldwork, he was suddenly told that his funding ended,
which eliminated the possibility of completing his doctorate program and
obtaining the qualification to teach. How convenient. Such obstacles created
for doctorate students, I now understand, are the “problems” to which the other
students referred.
Such
occurrences make me suspicious about the university’s true intentions behind
accepting international students. Because of these issues, my mind reverts back
to the student from India, who had begun his doctorate studies at Massey University
only to find that his research had been hijacked at the end of his program,
possibly by someone at the university. That this goes on at all at respectable
institutions is ironic, as some senior staff have earned degrees in international
universities (as highly regarded as Princeton, Yale, and Harvard), indicating
that they were probably treated with dignity. I wonder how these academics
would feel if they had been treated in the same way that I and other international
doctorate students have been treated here at Auckland and Massey.
Save
for the brief euphoria elicited by my pleasant visit with the barrister – a
reprieve from the melancholy moods that had settled into my days - I silently wondered
what good would come out of the meeting. If the university cannot even enforce
its own policies on its academic staff, who would be able to do so? Dare I say
that my academic experience with the university, especially when weighed along
with those of other international students, exhibit signs of taking advantage
of international students?
