Beijing university angered over ‘dates with sexy students’ stunt
Promotional event offering the chance to meet young women undergraduates criticised by college authorities
Authorities at Beijing Jiaotong University have promised to “seriously punish” the people responsible for a promotional stunt held on its grounds that offered dates with beauty pageant contestants, some of them its own students.
Few details of the event have been released, but pictures of the young women posing in school uniforms in front of a large banner carrying the words “Shared Miss College” were posted on Tech.qq.com on Thursday.
They had all previously been contestants in the Huyou 2017 Miss College contest organised by Sohu.com.
The promotion at the university, which started about noon on Wednesday, was sponsored by app developer Beijing Yiweide Culture and Media Company.
“We firmly oppose such events, and will further investigate it,” the university said in a statement published on Weibo, China’s answer to Twitter.
It added that it would “seriously punish the relevant people and pursue the legal responsibilities of the organisers”.
It did not say how the organisers managed to bypass security and set up the display on campus, but said officials quickly shut it down and cleared the site.
It said later that the event had been approved without its knowledge by an unnamed property management company.
It did not mention how many people were involved in the promotion or why university officials apparently made no effort to identify them.
