A college counsellor’s ego led to a young life being ended much before its time. It must have been with great effort and expectations that young Chun (name changed), who suffered from a congenital heart ailment, entered medical college last year in the northeastern province of Jilin, bordering Russia. The teachers took note of her medical certificate and exempted her from the mandatory physical exercises, but often took her help in taking the roll call of students when those exercises were set to begin. Everyone — staff and students — thus knew of her condition.

That, however, seemed not to matter to the counsellor who forced her to do exercises at 6 am on April 12. When Chun tried to show her medical certificate, the counsellor, who had never raised any doubts about it earlier, apparently retorted that it was fake. Which fresher can argue with a college functionary?

According to students present there, Chun collapsed while doing the exercises. They also alleged that the counsellor didn’t allow them to help her. She was eventually taken to a hospital, but survived for only two days.

Why did the counsellor do this?

According to Chun’s mother, the counsellor had asked Chun to bring a live fish from her hometown, where she had gone for the four-day Qingming (traditional tomb-sweeping) festival. Her daughter spent 100 yuan (Rs 1,153) on buying a fish. But when she presented it to her counsellor, it was dead. The fish had obviously not been able to survive the long journey back.

A furious counsellor probably decided to teach the fresher a lesson she’d never forget, or at least that’s how Chun’s mother sees it. The college, expectedly, refutes this; it has said that it is cooperating with the official inquiry into Chun’s death.

Take a stand

But this shocking incident had been witnessed by many and their outrage flooded the internet. Probably aware that its staffer was at fault, the college reportedly offered Chun’s mother a compensation of 100,000 yuan (more than Rs 11.5 lakhs). A week later, the province’s education department announced the result of its inquiry: the counsellor was stripped of her qualifications; this means she will never be able to work as a counsellor again. It also announced that she would face disciplinary action as a member of the Communist Party of China.

Curiously, though, the inquiry report said that Chun had collapsed just before starting the exercises and the counsellor had promptly administered first aid. There was no mention of any legal action against her. Instead, the department advised the medical college to reflect on the matter, and pledged to strengthen teachers’ ethics.

Will Chun’s classmates force the college to take legal action against the counsellor?

It’s not unknown for students to have forced universities to act against their own staff. There have been two such instances in this year itself. Last month, a Beijing associate professor was suspended and permanently banned from academic teaching after 15 students wrote an open letter detailing the verbal abuse she subjected them to, and the kind of tasks she gave them: from buying her breakfast to doing her daughter’s homework. In January, a Wuhan professor was sacked after 11 students wrote about
similar bullying as well as academic fraud.

Both these professors were overseeing post-graduate and research students, whose future depended on the former. In the Beijing case, when the students protested, the professor threatened to throw them out of the projects they were working on; some of them had to be treated for anxiety and depression.

Chun was an undergraduate student. Her classmates have less to lose by protesting collectively. Will they continue to fight for her?