Chinese college lecturer suspended for trying to grade students on their ability to hold hard liquor

Teacher and associate dean later said he wasn’t serious but had made indiscreet comments after he’d had a few

South China Morning Post

By Phoenix Kwong

April 14, 2016

A teacher at a college in southwestern China has been suspended after he tried to use student’s capacity to drink strong liquor as an assessment in their graduation exam, mainland media reports.

Gu Ming, a lecturer in Chinese pharmaceuticals at Anshun Vocational and Technical College in Guizhou province shocked his students when he told them to drink baiju, a strong spirit made from sorghum, during a graduation exam on Monday, the Guizhou City News reported on Wednesday.

“Your jobs in future will include sales, so you have to learn to drink,” Gu told students, who were told they would get 100 marks for finishing a whole shot of baiju, and 90 marks for half shot. Drinking one sip would score 60 marks while those who refused to drink would fail.

Many women students, who drank only lightly or not at all, complained about Gu’s conduct to the college administration, the report said.

Gu denied that he would really grade students on how much they could drink, but said he just wanted to farewell his students, according to the report.

Fu Guisheng, the associate dean of the college, said the school took the incident seriously and suspended Gu on Tuesday morning.

Fu explained that Gu did not really mean to use alcohol as a test, but that he made indiscreet remarks because he was drunk.

Gu was a good teacher in his topic and had conducted a number of research projects with his students in the past three years, Fu said.