Sisira Adikari has written a reply to Prof Sivasegaram.
First read Sisira's article that was serialsed in this blog recently.
Parts I & II - Paving the Way to Clear Applied Electricity Backlog
Part III - Aftermath of the boycott
Part IV - Student clash on the final day
Part V - Revenge
This is Prof Sivasegaram's letter sent to us and published alone with moderators reply.
Professor S Sivasegaram's eMail and our reply
Now read Sisira's reply.
Dear Professor,
It is true that in order to to tell my story, I had to refer to others by their names and with details of their actions.
I had no other way.
To me, if someone has done a bad thing, telling that it is not right is not an attack on them. That is simply telling the truth! That might even help them not to repeat their mistakes.
Have you thought about inconveniences I faced due those incidents I described in my article?
Certainly those incidents could not be explained with all pleasant rosy words. Those were unpleasant to me than they were to anyone else. However, I took care to convey the message with minimum side effects.
I would like to reiterate that all incidents that were mentioned in my article are truth and noting but the truth. Please also note that I have not mentioned a few other incidents that may be even bitter (to you).
When I was writing about things that someone may have another opinion on, I used the terms “In my view”, “I think”, “I believe” etc. In some instances I let reader to decide (eg: safety aspect of laboratory classes)
What I wanted to achieve from my article were:
(a) To shed light on the grosly unfair treatment that I received from the faculty which adversely affected my life and career.
(b) To tell the truth to the world.
(c) To prevent similar incidents, hopefully.
(d) To show how a simple lie affected someone’s life and unfairly prevented doing what one is passionate about.
If similar thing happened to you what would be your feelings?
Sir, those days when I saw some lecturers I avoided eye to eye contact and slowly crossed to the other side of the corridor. That was not out of respect them mainly due to fear.
We had lecturers that I fully respect: Prof Mahalingam, Sameul, and Milton Amaratunge to name a few (think about their calibre, haven’t they preserved standards of their subjects).
The difference between respect and fear is fear would go away once you loose your powers but respect would not.
Finally it is pathetic that you blame the technology rather commenting anything about what has happened to me fair or otherwise. It seems that you want to cut the finger that pointed at you but not address or comment on the issue that the finger is pointing at.
Regards,
Sisira Adikari
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I got my Engineering degree at Peradeniya in early 1980s. For me Prof Siva is disgusting figure as he inventor of simple thermodynamics as a complicated subject and common foe of vast majority of students at the faculty. He spends perhaps killing students time on corridor discussion to prove that he is always correct. I have good respect for noble ProfsThurairaja & Amarathunga. Not for this guy and Evil Prof Jay...ka of same subject
ReplyDeleteTo my mind mech dept was not a department to go for as the people there gave the impression of arrogance in their attitude and not surprisingly it has not changed. Sri Kankan are not living in mars but know what is the best in the world and well aware of oxford and Cambridge tutorial system where best mathematically talented with 3 A/;without chemistry enter engineering, majority of student pass with 1st class and 2d upper .honours, if no teachers are in trouble for lack of rating from rest of the universities and world at large whereas the cream of sl enter peradeniya and half of them end up failing the first year. Who's fault is this?
ReplyDeleteStephen Hawking the Cambridge famed cosmologist who was on wheel chair for more than 3 decades due to motor neuron disease of incurable muscular degeneration was known to have flopped his final year paper of maths degree at oxford and the tutor reported to have called him for an interview before awarding the degree.
ReplyDeleteSH reported to have told the tutor that if he were awarded the first class degree that he would go to Cambridge to specialise in cosmology if not he would stay at oxford.
This type of interview unheard of at EFac in our time and would have prevented the unfortunate shocking failure of almost half the students of the best of ceylon at that time as another 100 or so were studying for 5 year diplama at Kat.Tech.
No doubt subsequent batch should have improved their performance as we were the guinea pig of new regulation in 1967. I bought Stephen Hawking's A brief history of time at the airport in 1988 on my way to Singapore and gave the book to a 10 year old relative of mine and demonstrated the meaning of black hole to another nephew of mine who did a degree in physics in UK.
A film by the titile "Theory of Everything "about the life of above physicist based on a book by his first wife is worth seeing .
ReplyDelete