Online anger as college justifies its ban on Xmas
Print Edition
A COLLEGE in northwest China has been slammed for issuing a controversial statement about the New Year’s Eve stampede in Shanghai which left 36 people dead.
The Modern College of Northwest University in Xi’an, capital of Shaanxi Province, said last Friday that the tragedy proved that its holiday policies were “utterly correct.”
In late December, the college banned its students from celebrating Christmas and on Christmas Eve made them watch traditional cultural films, prompting a storm of criticism.
Its official microblog account said that Chinese traditional festivals and culture were fading away as more people embraced Western traditions.
In an editorial entitled “Shanghai stampede tragedy proves our holiday management utterly correct,” posted on its website, the college said that if such a stampede occurred on Christmas Eve in Xi’an, the value of the college’s holiday management would be “more self-evident.”
It said young people had become “overly infatuated” with Western holidays after decades of “Westernization” in China, and that the stampede was a result of loose management in colleges and universities.
There was an outpouring of anger online, with may people calling the college “shameless” for justifying its value by referring to the tragedy.
“It looks to me that the college is taking pleasure in others’ misfortune,” read one comment.
“In their logic, 2014 saw many plane crashes and I never took a flight, so that proves me ‘utterly correct’?” was another.
Others were more tolerant, saying that even though the wording might be a little rough, in essence they felt the article made sense.
The college, perhaps in reaction to the media frenzy over its post, changed the title to “Deeply grieving the loss of our compatriots in the Shanghai stampede tragedy,” but the content of the post remained untouched.
Tan Kejian, a research fellow with the School of Sociology under the Shanxi Academy of Social Sciences, said the college’s attitude toward holiday celebrations was negative and should not be adopted.
“You should not stop eating because of having hiccups,” Tan said, quoting an old Chinese saying.
Instead of banning celebrations, authorities should ramp up preventive measures to avoid similar disasters, he said.
Tens of thousands of people assembled on the Bund on Wednesday night to ring in the New Year. Most of those who lost their lives were young people, several of them university students.
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