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23 June 2014 MR. STEPHEN DEKREY President Asian Institute of
Management Paseo de Roxas Makati City
DYSFUNCTIONAL BEHAVIOUR COMPLAINT Against Dr. Hazel Paragua
(Program Director) and Dean Juan Miguel Luz
Dear President Dekrey: Although the Student Handbook of 2014
does not expressly state that a complaint may be initiated at the
Office of the President, it appears that considering the rank of
the officials involved, the nature of the matters in this complaint
more than warrant direct recourse to your office. Dr. Hazel Paragua
and Associate Dean J. M. Luz are here being charged with
dysfunctional behavior for failing to act on valid complaints
involving serious violations of the Student Handbook of 2014 and
favoritism, preferential treatment, coupled with bullying,
discriminatory and dismissive attitudes against the complainant.
The acts of plagiarism were committed by Mr. Armando Lee in the
Presentation for the Concept Notes submitted for his MRR.
1. On 25 Feb. 2014, Complainant sent an email to Dr. Paragua and
Dean Luz pointing out the existence of unmistakable plagiarism in
the work of one Armando Lee, class president. The email states
From: Khristin Consunji Date: Tue, Feb 25, 2014 at 6:57 PM
Subject: Fwd: Management Research Report (Concept Notes) To: Hazel
Paragua , Juan Miguel Luz , Juan Miguel Luz Dear Dr. Hazel and Dean
Luz, Please note the chronology -- Arman did not submit his report
until after Rommel did. I also have earlier emails from Rommel when
he gave his draft to our LT for comments, so I can personally
attest to his original authorship. Best, Chin
2. As stated in the email, Complainant brought to the attention
of Dr. Paragua and
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Dean Luz the copying or plagiarism committed by Armand Lee, who
stole intellectual work from Rommel Rubiales. As stated, it is a
matter of record that Rommel Rubiales distributed his Concept Notes
to all members of the Learning Team and submitted them ahead of
Armando Lee.
3. During a meeting attended by President Dekrey on 18 June
2014, Dean Luz flatly claimed that they looked at it and there was
nothing there, stating that he did not regard the copying or
replication by Arman as a case of plagiarism.
4. Luz, apparently speaking for Dr. Paragua and allegedly, Ron
Chua, went to some lengths to explain that similarities existed but
these were just like templates, which, he further claimed, cannot
be the subject of plagiarism. He used the example of a speaker
introducing himself in this fashion
SPEAKER A: Hi, my name is Juan dela Cruz, I am from De La Salle.
SPEAKER B: Hi, my name is Juan Miguel Luz, I am from AIM.
5. Dean Luz correctly concluded, on the basis of the above
explanation and example, that there could be no plagiarism to speak
of because these statements did not involve any original
intellectual work.
6. Regrettably, these statements made in the context of the said
meeting, can only be regarded as having the intention of deceiving
Dr. Dekrey into believing that the material copied is superficial
or incidental and that Complainant is delusional and given to
exaggeration. Clearly, Dean Luz attempted to discredit Complainant
before Dr. Dekrey painting her to be irrational or paranoid or of
unstable emotional and intellectual wellbeing.
7. Dean Luz also assured Dr. Dekrey that he himself looked into
the complaint for plagiarism and that he replied to Complainant and
informed her of his negative findings.
8. Just to be clear, here are the slides that Complainant sought
to bring to the attention of Dr. Paragua and Dean Luz
Slide No.
Rommels Slides Armans Slides Annex
3
A
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4
B
6
C
7
D
8
E
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9
F
10
G
9. The unmistakable identity and similarity of the content of
the slides is not limited to the text alone, but goes to the very
organization and progression of the intellectual framework behind
the work. Surely, these slides demonstrate a degree of duplication
that far exceeds the I am Juan Miguel Luz from AIM analogy
presented by Dean Luz to President Dekrey.
10. More importantly, this direct comparison establishes that
Dean Luz and Dr. Paragua completely ignored the complaint for
plagiarism.
11. Undoubtedly, the outright copying evident here merits more
than merely stating that there was nothing there.
12. Despite what appears undeniably as a facially serious
offense, Dean Luz practically twitted Complainant during the
meeting with President Dekrey, dismissing the entire matter as a
non-event.
13. To even conclude that the copying involved here is not
plagiarism, there must at least have been some effort to explain
why the prohibitions in the Student Handbook of 2014 do not apply.
(See Academic Dysfunctional Behaviour on pp. 17 to 19 of the
Student Handbook of 2014) No such effort was made to enlighten
complainant about violations of the rules of the school.
14. To be precise, this complaint for dysfunctional behavior
also includes the dismissive response to the plagiarism complaint
and the patent deception during the meeting
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with President Dekrey, indicative of a bias against complainant
or blatant favoritism or unwarranted protection of offender Armando
Lee.
15. Ms. Ismeera Qadeer, as a member of Learning Team 6 (of whom
both Mr. Rubiales and Ms. Consunji were members), was also aware
that Armando Lee had copied the MRR Concept notes presentation of
Rommel Rubiales as Ms. Consunji had alerted her to the issue.
16. Mr. Coen Damen, current SA Chairman, was also made aware of
the similarities between the presentations. In the following
email:
On Tue, Feb 25, 2014 at 10:02 AM, Coen Damen wrote: Hi Chin,
Lets have lunch one of these days. I'm quite stunned by the
similarities between the two! (actually I uttered a few
profanities...) I have to check what exactly the role of the SA is
in these matters, as I seem to recall that there is a distinct
difference between disciplinary issues about behavior on campus and
academic issues. I'm quite hung over today, this really doesn't
help.... I also hope Rommel is not affected by this. Cheers, C.
17. Ms. Consunji had blocked both Mister Armando Lee and Ms.
Maybelle Santos from her facebook page yet on May 26, 2014, Dean
Juan Miguel Luz had sent her the following text messages from his
number 09178842112:
Chin, you wrote on fb that we approved your transfer to another
LT? I made it clear that WE would make the announcement once
another LT has agreed to accept you. Now you have a class that is
questioning this. Youd better explain this to Dr. Hazel and myself.
You really need to process the implications of what you say and
write before you speak out. We dont need to be spending more time
dealing with these issues than we should. Mike Luz Sent at 8:21 am
Correction: The class officers (not the class) are raising issue.
Sent at 8:25 am
18. Ms. Qadeer had been informed of Ms. Consunjis impending move
to another Learning Team on May 25, 2014 when Ms. Consunji had sent
her a message on facebook about her impending move to another
Learning Team stating:
Ok Ismeera thanks, I have two (Learning Teams) lined up already.
Ty! Sent at 12: 29 am
19. Thus, it can only be deduced that Ms. Qadeer had informed
Mr. Armando Lee or Ms. Maybelle Santos about Ms. Consunjis
announcement on her facebook page from the previous night. Dean
Juan Miguel Luzs continued preferential treatment of
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Ms. Ismeera Qadeer and the class officers resulted in bullying
and harassing behaviours to the extent of intruding upon the
facebook page of the complainant which is not within the mandate of
the Institution.
20. During a meeting attended by President Dekrey on June 18
2014, Dean Juan Miguel
Luz had alluded to the pending dysfunctional behavior complaint
against Ms. Ismeera Qadeer by not naming her, and he also stated
that BRAC (Ms. Qadeers employer) is the largest NGO in the world
which contributed to his continued inaction against Ms. Qadeeer in
order to satisfy his commercial client to the detriment of Ms.
Consunjis health and well-being, which eventually enabled her to
continue harassing complainant.
21. Ms. Consunji had filed a complaint against Doctor Hazel
Paragua to Rey Reyes on
March 12, 2014 for her preferential treatment of Armando Lee as
well as failure to investigate the plagiarism complaint:
---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Khristin Consunji
Date: Wed, Mar 12, 2014 at 1:11 AM Subject: Complaint To: "Reyes,
Rey D." This is a formal complaint I am filing against our program
director, Hazel Paragua, for lack of impartial behaviour in
investigating a plagiarism allegation. On February 24, 2014, I was
made aware that our class president Armando Lee had lifted
significant portions of his MRR Concept Notes presentation from my
teammate, Rommel Rubiales. When Ms. Paragua was made aware of this
anomaly and when I spoke to her about it on the morning of February
26, 2014, she alleged that she did not believe any plagiarism
occurred because she believed that Armando and Rommel had followed
a "pro forma strategic management template" and that the MRR
presentation was technically not subject to plagiarism charges,
even if it was submitted to our instructor Professor Ron Chua. Ms.
Paragua then referred the case to Dean Luz who called me into his
office at approximately 11 am and reprimanded me for a supposedly
false plagiarism accusation, with a copy of the MRR concept notes
instead of the plagiarized presentation which was forwarded to him
via e-mail on February 24. As of today, there have been no
significant repercussions for Armando Lee for his plagiarism and
such permissiveness from both our program director and the dean of
the management school does not speak well of the academic integrity
of our institution. Furthermore, Ms. Paragua did not exercise sage
judgment in recommending a reprimand for the person who reported
the plagiarism instead of the perpetrator of the plagiarism -- this
constitutes dysfunctional and immensely biased behaviour in any
context and will not be tolerated in any form. I would recommend
that Ms. Paragua be recused from any and all assessments I am
involved with, as I am seriously questioning her judgment or lack
thereof with respect to academic matters. From: Khristin Consunji
Date: Wed, Mar 12, 2014 at 1:18 AM Subject: Re: Complaint To:
"Reyes, Rey D."
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I am enclosing the presentations, both the original from Mr.
Rubiales (my teammate) and Armando Lee. To this date, Armando is
given access to the work of other students (marked and unmarked)
due to his position, which creates more opportunities for
dysfunctional academic behaviour in the future. All correspondences
where Mr. Rubiales sent out his original report to the entire class
and Mr. Lee expressed his admiration for said report can be found
on the server. E-mails alerting Hazel Paragua and Dean Luz to the
similarities between these submissions can also be found on the
server. ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Khristin
Consunji Date: Thu, Mar 13, 2014 at 12:22 AM Subject: Re: Complaint
To: "Reyes, Rey D." Dear Mr. Reyes, I have not forwarded a copy of
this complaint to Dean Lim yet. To be perfectly honest, my
experience in reporting the situation to Hazel Paragua and Dean
Luz's response have made me reticent to forward this to Dean Lim
until I could gather my thoughts. I spent the past two weeks
debating the pros and cons, and after consulting extensively with
my parents and my extended family, I was told to withdraw from the
program if this type of behaviour was condoned in AIM. However,
seeing as I have already committed to the program (both in terms of
time and money), the other option was to see to it that these
things never have the opportunity to repeat themselves. I would
like to note that I had made Dean Luz aware of lack of impartiality
on the part of Ms. Paragua before, particularly with respect to our
RAA assignments. These correspondences can be found on the server.
Ms. Paragua had advised our team that we were not to use prior
contacts or work in sectors/industries we have had prior experience
with for our RAA. (I can copy furnish all correspondences to that
effect.) I had made her aware that this was to our detriment
because our learning team contains members of government, two
members of nonprofits, a member of the private sector such as
myself and a member of the church -- in effect, this was to our
detriment and it seemed like an arbitrarily excessive application
of the RAA rules. Upon questioning two previous MDM students Ms.
Paragua invited to our class this afternoon, it was noted that Ms.
Lim's team violated the restrictions Ms. Paragua had enforced by
working with a sector a teammate had prior experience with. Thus, I
am questioning the inconsistencies and selective application of
policies on her part with respect to RAA assignments, as her biases
could severely affect the assessment we are meant to carry out. You
are free to forward my correspondences to Dean Lim if the official
submission of the complaint necessitates it. Best, Khristine
22. Subsequent failure to act on said complaint contributed to
Dr. Paraguas and Dean Juan Miguel Luzs continued bullying
behaviour, which eventually resulted in refusal to grant an
extension for our Rapid Area Assessment report despite the fact
that
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there were only four members in Ms. Consunjis team as opposed to
six in other teams. Complainant asked if she could extend the
deadline for our Rapid Area Assessment report due to the absence of
Ms. Dong Nguyen Thi Thu and Father Richard Ripon Rozario from the
RAA. Ms. Dong Nguyen Thi Thus mother suffered from a stroke while
the father of Father Ripon had passed away, leaving only four
teammates to carry out an immensely difficult task:
On Tue, Apr 29, 2014 at 11:39 PM, wrote: Dear Chin, This is a
rapid appraisal, not an MRR. The assumption is that you will not
have complete data given the short period of time. But given data
collected (and you seem to have a lot), you should be able to draw
a profile of the community and its existing challenges. Do what you
can and submit what you have. The deadline cannot be moved given
the presentation schedule on May 1 and 2. Mike Luz
Sent from my BlackBerry wireless handheld
From: Khristin Consunji Date: Tue, 29 Apr 2014 23:05:47 +0800
To: Paragua, Hazel L.; Juan Miguel Luz; Juan Miguel Luz; Hazel
Paragua Subject: Request for Extension of RAA Submission Dear
Doctor Hazel and Dean Luz, I would like to request if we could
extend the deadline for submission of the RAA report. Seeing as our
team is understaffed at the moment (Dong and Father Ripon have
family issues to attend to) and given the amount of fieldwork we
had to undertake, it is simply not possible or feasible to have a
report of 25-35 pages due by 1pm tomorrow. Today, Ismeera and I sat
down for 15 hours straight with no breaks just to finish up our
data analysis and write the preliminary draft. We are not sure what
the other teammates are doing as we have asked Rommel and Leka to
join us to write the report but we have not received submissions or
feedback from them at this date. There was a considerable amount of
fatigue involved given all the data we had to gather in such a
short amount of time, as well as the stress of interviewing IDPs
for the duration of our stay. The stresses also caused considerable
conflicts in the team as we had a very complex topic to cover and
we needed to give it the consideration it merited. I understand if
this is not feasible or possible, but I hope you understand that we
were all working immensely hard in the field and we barely had time
to write after coming back to the resort every day. We also decided
to stay in Estancia on April 27, 2014 to get the technical reports
from DENR-EMB, Doctor Rex Sadaba and the rest of the interagency
task force. The informal interviews we conducted with them were
key, as they allowed us to finally understand why the contractor
was hired and all the attendant issues. Since fishing is the main
driver of the economy in Estancia and it is the LGUs role to
enforce fishing bans 3k from the shore, unfortunately there is a
very high chance that everything from that port is contaminated. We
also discovered that residents were allowed to move back to the
shoreline on December 20, 2014 but the benzene ppm on January 2,
2014 and January 4, 2014 was far above the permissible level. Other
issues such as skin diseases and health issues we saw in the
evacuation centers, as well as the considerable amount of bunker
oil left on the shoreline where people are actively fishing are
immense causes of concern and it still eludes us how to articulate
the nature of what we observed. Best, Chin
23. Complainant requested another extension as she had not slept
due to the difficulties of the data-gathering required for the RAA,
which Doctor Hazel Paragua oversees.
From:
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Date: Tue, Apr 29, 2014 at 11:21 PM Subject: Re: Request for
Extension of RAA Submission To: "Consunji, Khristin" , "Paragua,
Hazel L." , Juan Miguel Luz , "Luz, Juan Miguel"
Dear Chin, We do understand your predicament but the deadline
set for the written report (April 30, 1pm) only allows minimal time
for the faculty to review your work before your oral report
presentation. Since your group will be the first to report at
8:30am on May 1, it will be to your disadvantage if the faculty
will not be able to even glance at your paper and base your
evaluation almost entirely on the oral presentation. Before Dung
and Fr Ripon left the country, they promised to participate in your
report writing thru email. Since you were concerned about your
group and individual grades and participation prior to leaving for
Estancia, I suggest you get contribution from ALL team members so
that not one or two will be overloaded. Remember that RAA grading
is mostly about teamwork and cooperation. This must be reflected in
your output as well. We can only move your deadline to 5pm
tomorrow. We still have to provide all faculty members with hard
copies of your written reports before they all leave AIM. Late
papers will be graded down. Good luck. Dr Hazel ----------
Forwarded message ---------- From: Khristin Consunji Date: Tue, Apr
29, 2014 at 11:34 PM Subject: Re: Request for Extension of RAA
Submission To: Hazel Paragua Cc: "Paragua, Hazel L." , Juan Miguel
Luz , "Luz, Juan Miguel"
Dear Doctor Hazel, Thank you for your response. Would it be
possible to submit our preliminary draft tomorrow and then the
final one at a later date? I understand the need for teamwork but
given the severity of the personal/family issues for Dong and
Father Ripon, it has been difficult to contact them for
participation in this report. On the evening of the 27th, there was
also an incident where a teammate simply stated that he did not
want to work anymore, as he had been overtaxed. Unfortunately,
these are issues that happen and they are understandable when
everybody is under duress, but this what we have to work with.
Ismeera and I tried calling the other teammates to come in but they
have refused, so we have to factor in the possibility that she and
I will have to write this report solely. As of now, there are
roughly 2,000 words and realistically, perhaps another 2,000 can be
produced tomorrow but it is unsure what the quality of the output
would be. I would like to stress that everybody has contributed and
everybody has worked very hard -- it is a
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collective effort. The team has performed and we performed well.
But there's really nothing left in the tank and we cannot be
assured that everything will come together in less than 24 hours
time. If there is a late penalty, perhaps it would be best if we
are aware of it so we can plan for that possibility. This is a good
report and we were able to identify the key gaps -- but as I had
joked, I believe we are also in need of some humanitarian
assistance because exposure to these issues while working was very
taxing for us all, psychologically. Best, Chin
24. Failure to grant the extension by both Dean Luz and Doctor
Paragua resulted in Ms. Consunjis hospitalization on May 6, 2014
for high fever and exhaustion. Supporting documentation was
submitted to Program Associate Lyndon Constantino.
25. It is believed that the manner in which Dean Luz condoned
the bullying behavior on the part of Doctor Paragua stems from the
personal relationship between Doctor Paragua and the donor to the
AIM Center for Development Management, Stephen Zuellig.
26. Thus, Dean Luz knowingly and maliciously condoned injurious
behavior against Ms. Consunji by Doctor Paragua as he valued
commercial interests and fiscal concerns over the safely and
well-being of his students.
27. Complainant respectfully prays for the application of the
imposable sanctions against all liable parties under the rules of
the Institute.
In the City of Makati, 24 June 2014. Khristine Consunji