Student ‘forced to drop out’ after anti-discrimination speech

The experience of a vocational college student in China who was punished for speaking out against discrimination based on sexual orientation has provoked outrage online.

Hu Siyi, a former student in early childhood education at Beijing Economic and Trade Higher Vocational School, expressed his frustration in a viral Weibo post about being forced to drop out of his course after he publicly voiced his opinion on anti-LGBT discrimination.

Online footage shows him on the stage at a Living Library event in December 2019 declaring: “I am speaking on my own behalf, hoping to raise the awareness of discrimination against the homosexual community.” Within two days of that impromptu speech, his parents were informed of his action and he was advised by the institution to “voluntarily” drop out because of the “wrong behaviour” that “disgusted some parents of other students”, he wrote in the post.

The then 17-year-old student told Times Higher Education that he had been diagnosed with depression and had been rejected by three other colleges since he signed the dropout form about a year ago. “I speak up now because I demand an apology and compensation for moral damage [from the school],” he said.

According to Cui Le, a PhD student at the Faculty of Education and Social Work at the University of Auckland whose research focuses on the experiences of LGBT students and scholars in Chinese higher education, “sexual minorities are invisible and muted” on campuses across the country.

“Besides insufficient support for this community, institutions tend to suppress them with censorship and strict student management,” he said. “In such an indifferent and hostile environment, these students often have no choice but to carefully manage their identity.”

A 2019 survey of 732 LGBTQ students across 29 provinces in China indicated that they thought most universities were “not inclusive”. The researchers from Beijing Normal University also found that 85 per cent of respondents felt depressed and about 40 per cent had had suicidal thoughts.

According to local media, a citizens’ advice hotline in China confirmed that it had received complaints from the student in Beijing previously and said his college had defended its decision on the basis that his remarks involved “promoting homosexuality” and that if he were to become a nursery teacher after graduating, he “would exert certain impact on the mental and physical health of the children”.

karen.liu@timeshighereducation.com