July 2, 2009
In the latest development of a case that has received quite a bit of attention over the past week, the admissions office of Peking University announced yesterday that it would not accept the application of He Chuanyang to study at the university’s Guanghua School of Management.
He had the highest score on the college entrance exam, the gaokao, in Chongqing this year. However, along with thirty other Chongqing students, He was found to have faked his ethnic minority status, which awards 20 bonus points on the gaokao.
He himself claimed ignorance of his altered records. An investigation revealed that in 2006, his father He Yeda, an education official in Wushan County who lost his job after the scandal was exposed, conspired with Wan Minqiang, then director of the bureau of religion and minority affairs, to change his son’s ethnic registration.
The Beijing News also report another PKU-related news item: a senior math major left the university on June 29 and has been out of contact ever since.
The student, identified as Li, was found to have plagiarized a paper, which makes his graduation prospects uncertain.
After he went missing, his parents and grandmother rushed to the university, first begging for leniency and then getting physical with two university staff members. A party secretary told the newspaper that he suffered scratches, and another university official was bitten on the arm. Police were called to take away Li’s mother and grandmother.
And in other fight-related news, a man settled a dispute with someone who owed him money by pouring inflammable liquid onto the two of them and lighting it. The debtor was rushed into the hospital with burns over 100 percent of his body, while the creditor fared better with only 10 percent of his body burned.