New | Chinese students raise a stink after university orders them to take on janitor duties
'We're here to study, not clean!' students say after president orders them to take charge of cleaning dorms and toilets to build character
A Chinese university’s new policy demanding that students clean their own dormitories – including toilets – has caused a backlash, as pupils complained they should be there purely to study.
Students of Nanchang University, a prestigious school in China’s southeastern Jiangxi province, were put in charge of cleaning duties from September 1, the start of the term. University authorities said the initiative was intended to make students better people by doing labour work.
”Students born after the 1990s are very weak in manual labour. [Most of them are] the single child in the family,” university president Zhou Chuangbing said, explaining the policy’s rationale in response to the criticisms.
”So I think labouring can get them trained, which [also] popularises many traditional Chinese traits,” Zhou said in an interview with Shanghai-based news website thepaper.cn.
However, students countered that they had come to the school to study, not to clean. Four days into the new policy, more than 470 students signed an open letter to Zhou in protest.
