College defends Christmas ban

College students wearing traditional Chinese clothing join a campaign to boycott Christmas celebrations on a street in Changsha, Central China's Hunan province on December 24, 2014. With slogans saying "Boycott Christmas-Chinese don't celebrate foreign festivals" in hands, these students call on people to focus on Chinese traditional festivals and celebrate festivals in a rational way. (Source: China News Service/ Yang Huafeng)

A college in Northwest China's Shaanxi Province that banned Christmas celebrations on its campus justified its holiday ban as "utterly correct" on Monday with the fatal stampede on New Year's Eve in Shanghai.

The Modern College of Northwest University in Xi'an, Shaanxi, posted an article on the front page of its school website entitled "Shanghai stampede tragedy proves our holiday management utterly correct" on Monday, triggering renewed discussions after its Christmas ban in campus was widely criticized.

The statement came after a fatal stampede in Shanghai's Bund area on late Wednesday during New Year's Eve celebration left 36 dead and another 40 injured, among which 13 suffered from serious injuries.

Most of the injured are young people in their 20s, a majority of them women. There were also college students and children, according to the Xinhua News Agency.

The college has banned its students from celebrating Christmas in 2014 and instead it made the students watch patriotic videos and Confucius-related films for three hours in classrooms.

"If such a stampede occurred on Christmas Eve in Xi'an, the value of our college's holiday management would be more self-evident," the article read, adding that students should "oppose Western festivals and promote traditional Chinese culture."

"We felt relieved not to see this tragedy happened in Xi'an on Christmas Eve, but we also grieved for the death of students from universities in Shanghai," the article added.

Many Net users were angered by such remarks with thousands of comments online criticizing the college. "We think our college is shameless in taking advantage of this tragedy for publicity purposes. What happened in Shanghai had nothing to do with the college and it should not boast its holiday policies by belittling other universities especially the ones in Shanghai," a senior student at the college surnamed Liu told the Global Times.

"It is not appropriate for the college to justify its policy based on the stampede in Shanghai but should learn how to enhance students' awareness of accidents and to improve their capability to deal with emergencies," Chu Zhaohui, a research fellow from the National Institute of Education Science, told the Global Times.

Chu also said that the school's policy might have violated education laws and its attitude towards Western holidays and culture showed its ignorance to cultural integration.

The college's article was later removed from the website on Monday afternoon. The college said it removed the article because its website was being hacked, which prevented students from checking their exam information, the Beijing Times reported.