While UF student Robert Ocampo spends the end of Spring determining how he’ll earn credits for his Chinese minor, I-Chun Peir uses the back entrance into her office.
Peir leaves campus as soon as possible every day. To use the restroom, she’ll walk downstairs.
She can’t risk running into her coworkers. She says it hurts too much.
“When I see their face, I have a wound, and it puts salt on my wound,” Peir said. “I don’t want them to see any (of) my sorrows.”
Peir was involved with the UF in Chengdu Summer abroad program for nine years and has been the main director for several years. According to the study abroad website, the price of the trip ranges from about $3,300 to $4,150, not including airfare. Peir said miscommunication surrounding the program led to her removal, and after feeling like she was being treated unfairly, she resigned last month.
The program was subsequently canceled, leaving students like Ocampo, who were registered for the trip, confused.
“Right now, I don’t want to resign,” Peir said. “I was so emotional.”
She said her resignation was in anticipation of her being fired, but she hoped to finish out her job this Spring and go to Chengdu with her students.
An email from the then-head of the Languages, Literature and Culture department, Ingrid Kleespies, said due to “issues surrounding management of the Chengdu program,” Peir would be removed from administration. When Peir followed up and asked for her to appeal the decision, Kleespies said the choice was final.
Kleespies declined to comment on anything regarding the Chengdu program and Peir. The current department chair, Akintunde Akinyemi, also declined to comment.
“She didn’t want to give me a second chance,” Peir said. “It’s unfair to me and my Summer A students.”
On March 8, 12 days after Peir resigned and Kleespies took her off the program, an email was sent out to the 17 students who were registered for the program and had already organized their schedules and were expecting to travel to Chengdu in just a few months.
It said the program would be canceled due to “unforeseen circumstances.”
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Peir still doesn’t know exactly why she was removed.
She said she suspects it’s because of two decisions she made for the program, but defends them as being fair.
The first was letting her husband, Jih-Kwon Peir, be hired as a teaching assistant for the Summer program. Jih-Kwon, a UF computer and information science and engineering associate professor, was unofficially helping Peir with the Chengdu program from the beginning, she said.
Peir said when she mentioned the extent of his role to officials in the International Center, Susanne Hill, the executive director, said she would be happy to pay him.
When Peir was removed from the program, her husband was as well.
“We don’t really want to be any trouble, but we feel it’s unfair,” Jih-Kwon Peir said.
Hill also declined to comment.
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Before both she and her husband were removed from the program, Peir said she was called into a meeting about textbooks. Instead, the discussion turned to her decisions with Chengdu.
“Every person just point(ed) to me,” she said. “’Why you put your husband,’ I say, I didn’t do that, UFIC initialed that.”
She said her removal also could involve confusion surrounding the trip’s budget, which she organizes. Peir said she thought the budget had enough money to prevent the cost of the trip being raised by $300 a student.
In an email to the department, Hill said $4,000 was removed from the budget after Peir looked at it. Before Peir could see the email and reply that there was a misunderstanding, both Kleespies and another professor had already replied with confusion.
Peir sent a follow-up email saying that the budget had been enough to cover everything, including a teaching assistant for the department that others were concerned about.
“I don’t know if she misunderstood,” Peir said. “That’s why I tried to clear everything.”
She said she thought the email would solve the confusion, but then Kleespies emailed her asking to meet regarding “her status.”
Peir said she jumped to the worst conclusion, thinking of the last meeting where she felt ambushed.
So instead of attending, Peir submitted her resignation but asked to remain for the Summer’s Chengdu program.
“My health condition and the recent events have really taken a toll this year,” Peir wrote in her resignation letter. “I feel very tired, untrusted and unappreciated.”
After being told she wouldn’t be directing the Chengdu program, Peir tried to appeal. Kleespies said the decision was final, and Hill said the decision was up to the department.
“I emailed everybody, but it looks like nobody listened to that,” Peir said. “I think they already made a decision at the beginning to just take me off.”
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Robert Ocampo, a 19-year-old UF mathematics sophomore, set aside money designated for rent to fund his trip to Chengdu.
He worked more hours at the O’Connell Center to raise the money for the program.
Now, Ocampo won’t have to spend the money. But he’ll have to find a way to earn the class credits.
“I kind of had this plan in mind of how I was going to go about the Chinese minor, and it just sort of got chopped up a little bit,” he said.
Ocampo said he’s unable to afford other programs to China, even with scholarships UF is offering for those who were registered for Chengdu.
Ocampo said the only explanation he heard regarding the trip’s cancellation was budget issues.
“I would assume that kind of thing is done and taken care of before students have finished applying for the program,” he said.
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Peir doesn’t know what’s next.
She said she’ll miss teaching her students, many of whom she viewed as her children.
Photos of her with students in Chengdu sit on her office’s windowsill. In a few days, she’ll pack up the pictures, signed by each student, and leave.
“In case my innocence could be proved as innocent, then I will feel good,” she said. “Because now I feel they treat me not fair, and they treat my students not fair.”
Contact Romy Ellenbogen at rellenbogen@alligator.org and follow her on Twitter at @romyellenbogen
Erica Drayer, a 19-year-old UF cultural anthropology sophomore, pets Xixi, a giant panda in May 2014 at the Chengdu Research Base of Giant Pandas Breeding in Chengdu, China. Drayer is one of 28 UF students studying abroad in Chengdu for a six-week Chinese language program.
