Student spirit
After PKU student demands information disclosure on sexual harassment, she is forced into a showdown
○ Students at Peking University, one of China’s most prestigious schools, have been pushing for information disclosure on a sexual harassment case by a former professor
○ The school is privately meeting with the students, trying to quiet down matters
○ China has a long tradition of students participating in public affairs, but in recent years many have grown apathetic to public affairs
China’s internet was roused by a public letter that went viral on Monday. Yue Xin, a senior student at Foreign Languages School at Peking University (PKU), one of China’s most prestigious universities, addressed teachers and students on her WeChat, explaining what had happened to her since her application for information disclosure about an alleged sexual harassment case years ago.
On April 9, eight students from PKU, including Yue, submitted the application, asking their school to reveal conference minutes and police investigation reports on Shen Yang, a former professor at the university accused of sexually harassing a female student 20 years ago, which led to her suicide.
Since the allegations in early April, PKU issued a notice saying Beijing’s Xicheng district police bureau investigated the matter back in 1998 and the school had already “punished” Shen. Some students, unsatisfied by the wording of this statement, united in demanding more information. They wrote articles and applied through official school channels for information disclosure.
The students’ efforts to push for change soon turned into a tug-of-war between them and the school’s administration. According to Yue’s open letter, since her application, the Student Affairs office often met with her about “concluding” her campaign. A little past midnight last Sunday, Yue’s student counselor suddenly showed up at her dormitory with her mother, asking Yue to delete all her files on the case.
“Faced with my mother’s crying, selfslapping, kneeling, begging and suicide threats … I could only temporarily return home with her,” Yue wrote, seeking help from other students.
After Yue was taken home, one of her old blog posts was dug up. In it she described the privileges she had at birth: a house, middle-class family and a Beijing
hukou. She credited getting into such a prestigious university to her social class, not her own toils. Yue says she feels guilty to have benefited from the imbalanced social structure, therefore she feels she cannot live only for herself but to seek social justice.
The School of Foreign Languages said on its website Monday evening that Yue’s mother was summoned on Sunday by Yue’s school counselor out of concern, after the faculty members failed to contact the student between Sunday afternoon and evening. PKU has not responded to the Global Times as of press time.
Unremitting efforts
The battle to disclose information about Shen’s sexual harassment case began with a blog post on April 7, written by Deng Yuhao, a senior at PKU’s School of Mathematical Sciences. He wrote on his WeChat public account (which was later closed down against Deng’s
will) that “if there are bugs in a tree, then the best celebration gift for the tree is to find them and remove them.” The “celebration” refers to PKU’s upcoming 120th anniversary on May 4. He then said he would go to PKU’s office of information disclosure to hand in an application and invited his peers to go with him.
It is written in PKU’s student regulations that “all important matters related to the students” should be disclosed. Immediately after Deng posted the article, a counselor from his school invited him to meet at his office, where the counselor put pressure on Deng to delete his article, as Deng revealed later.
School counselors at Chinese universities began in the 1960s, were put on hold during the turmoil of the Cultural Revolution (1966-76), then resumed in 1978. In a document released by the State Council in 2004, school counselors are described as an important part of the staff at higher education institutions, who can “carry out ideological and political education to college students and be the guidance in their healthy growth.”
In practice, counselors take charge over a variety of tasks, including the students’ psychological well-being, career planning and social relations. Deng’s articles and other interviews he conducted are no longer on WeChat, however the Global Times found a copy
on Baidu Snapshot. “I think the public disclosure system at PKU is a legal and regulated channel, it has procedural justice and as students we should use such channels more and promote equal and friendly communication with the school,” he told Li Yiming, another student who runs a WeChat public account called “Ten Foot Deep.”
The students’ efforts were not in vain. On April 8, the school’s moral and discipline committee for teachers publicly disclosed documents that previously declared punishment for Shen. Meanwhile, the school decided to push for an antisexual harassment system. In an interview, PKU’s head of Student Affairs told media that the school will receive student requests according to procedures and also collect suggestions from students.
The students applauded the school’s timely response, but also pointed out that the document shows that the school did not conduct a thorough investigation of Professor Shen or the serious charges against him.
On April 9, eight students including Li and Yue submitted applications requesting more information from the school’s office. On the application’s receipt, it is said that the office will reply within 15 working days.
Li was initially optimistic that his application would be taken seriously by the counselor on duty. “I hope other students can read this record and let go their concerns about the school in the future, so they can actively participate in school affairs and form an organic interaction with the school, to make PKU a better place,” Li later wrote in
an article on his WeChat public account.
According to Yue’s public letter, on April 20, the school issued a response to her application, saying the documents she sought were not recorded or found. On Monday, two weeks after her application, Yue was taken home by her mother under pressure from Yue’s counselor.
Fellow students and outside support from netizens have been exceptionally strong. Posts bearing Yue’s open letter as well as additional information regarding the case and the information disclosure have been widely shared online, though many WeChat posts were deleted in the process.
According to photos circulating on Weibo Monday night, a hand-written, anonymous letter titled “Support for hero Yue Xin” was posted on PKU’s public bulletin board. The letter, signed “ghosts under the lake,” accused school authorities of trying to squelch the matter because they were afraid of chaos ahead of the school’s anniversary celebrations, according to Qdaily.
“We hope the school can provide us the information we seek,” one of Yue’s friends, who was present during her application for information disclosure, told the Global Times. “The school’s actions were no doubt below bottom line and I will certainly keep an eye on the future development of the affairs.”
Grass-roots movement
In a Southern Weekly commentary published on April 12, a few days after Deng’s application for information disclosure, the author praised Deng’s action, saying it’s in line with the “true spirit of PKU,” and in line with PKU students’ tradition of caring about public affairs. Indeed, PKU students
led the May Fourth Movement in 1919, a series of student protests that began in Beijing, against Chinese government’s weak response to the Treaty of Versailles, which allowed Japan to receive territories in Shandong Province. The protests later stormed all of China, joined by people from all walks of life. This grass-roots, anti-imperialist and patriotic movement has been praised in Chinese history books. .
However, in recent years there have been growing criticism of younger Chinese students, especially the generation born in the 1990s, who appear apathetic to public affairs and politics. Commentators invented the word foxi, or “Zengeneration,” to describe modern Chinese youth who seem to be fine with anything that happens to them, good or bad, who are not inspired by patriotism or the Party’s catchphrases.
Some say this new trend is a passive reaction against China’s rapid changes and development, which has made many young adults feel “helpless” and “left behind.” Rather than fighting against change, these Buddha-like youngsters resignedly accept their lot in life.
Despite the criticism, there are many university students around China who have attempted to make changes in the public domain in recent years. Qiubai (pseudonym) is one of them. The female student became widely known after her lawsuit against China’s Bureau of Education in 2015.
In 2014, Qiubai, who was then a student at the Guangzhou-based Sun Yat-sen University, found that a series of textbooks still in use included homophobic content, describing homosexuality as perverted and an illness, as well as including descriptions of “conversion therapy.” China’s Classification and Diagnostic Criteria of Mental Disorders has since removed related chapters.
Qiubai called on the bureau to disclose information about supervision over higher institutions’ usage of textbooks. After not receiving a satisfactory answer, she brought her case to court. She told the Global Times she has received a fair amount of pressure from her school, especially from her counselor.
“When they are in a good mood, they will just say ‘focus on your studies, stop minding the ‘gay business,’ it won’t do you good in the long run;’ but when they are careless about their attitude … they say they’ll alert my parents, and that this has harmed the school’s reputation greatly,” she said.
The Chinese version of the #MeToo movement that began this January with a report about Beihang University professor Luo Xixi, who was accused of sexual harassment eight years ago, is an example of Chinese students leading the change in public affairs. Li Youyou, the student who reported PKU’s professor Shen, was also inspired by Luo’s actions.
Accusations made against professors at other higher education institutions around the nation have ensued, forever altering China’s educational landscape.