April 4, 2000

Dear Mr. President:


This is an open letter casting a vote of no confidence in your
leadership. Your style is both arrogant and insincere and is 
far from what is suited to reconcile with the disenfranchised
members of our San Francisco Chapter of the Pui-Ching Alumni Association.

At the February board meeting, no evident could be found to
substantiate the embezzlement allegation against Niki as stated in the anonymous letter. You, therefore, openly promised to have the retraction statement previewed by board members Francis and King, and also by Niki, for feedback prior to publication in  the newsletter; yet the newsletter and the preview copies were mailed out on the same day. It is almost comical to see you proclaiming to be a Christian on the one hand while making a promise you have no intention of keeping on the other. You continue to play games which is consistent with Francis's earlier allegation that you and Wu were involved in a conspiracy to exclude the newer runner-ups from joining the board.

Your retraction in the newsletter is insincere because, aside
from a couple of lines for retraction, the entire paragraph was
devoted to making Niki look bad by rehashing the accusation that she had used the $400 donation money (which was not mentioned during the board meeting) to entertain Pui-Ching guests from Hong Kong and the spending of an accountant fee for tax filing purpose which is clearly authorized by the by-law in Section 6.2.8(c). Also in the Standard Operating Procedures (SOP), it  says "reimbursement with proper documentation". Proper documentation is open to various interpretations and surely is not limited to receipts which John Hom did not ask for at the time of reimbursement, not until a year later. Such petty criticisms were clearly designed to give Niki a hard time and hardly can be called the red-and-blue spirit as you cited throughout the board meeting. Your tactic is consistent with that employed by the anonymous letter passed out at last year's Alumni Day Banquet - to make Niki look bad. A sincere apology coupled with the resignation of the principal Alumni Day offenders would have served as a good closure to these unfortunate incidents. But you do not seem to grasp the gravity of the situation here; you continue to play game, and have so far led the Association towards a stage which is more susceptible to a defamation of character law suit. Let us hope that it doesn't come to that.

Under your leadership and in the name of forgive and forget
and march on, which actually only the victim is entitled to grant (imagine how ridiculous it would be if Japan were to  urge China to forget and forgive about the Rape of Nanking and
march on!), your editor has turned his newsletter into a rug 
where he can sweep dirt under. He uses it to stone-wall the 
Alumni Day incidents and its aftermath (one-third of the 1999
board members resigned in disgust), instead of making his
newsletter an open forum for the members to voice their  opinions. If he cannot stand the heat, he should simply get
out of the kitchen. Since the newsletter is only a shadow of
what it is supposed to be, I am sending it back to him as a 
form of protest. I urge others to do the same.

As our President, you are mandated to represent the entire
membership and not just the offenders. I had high hopes that
your administration would spend less effort to protect these
offenders and spend more effort to find closure to these  unfortunate incidents so that the Association can indeed march on as one. I am sorry to say that I don't see this happening.


Disappointed,


Pat Wong (黃雄耀 Class of 1959)