Thousands of students at the Yu Lin First Vocational Secondary School in Guangxi gathered on the campus on the night of October 16th to protest against the school’s planned cellphone ban, which would restrict phone usage to only three hours per day. The students revealed that their protest was ineffective, as the school continued to enforce the cellphone usage limit policy.
On October 13th, the school announced the “Student Cellphone Management System,” which stipulated that cellphones would be stored by the school from Sunday evening upon returning to campus until Friday afternoon before school let out. Cellphones had to be turned in at 19:30 daily, and students were required to place their phones in their classroom lockers before they were collected and stored in a designated area. The designated hours for cellphone use were from 16:30 to 19:30 daily.
A student at the school, referred to as Huang Jin for anonymity, told a reporter that the document released by the school was from 2021 but was only being implemented now. He said, “The school leaders said this document was suitable for us, so they decided to implement it. We don’t understand the school’s reasoning behind this decision.”
This policy sparked a collective protest among the students at the school.
On the evening of October 16th, thousands of students from the entire school walked out of classrooms and gathered on the campus, with many students also standing in the hallways in front of classrooms, chanting “protest, protest” echoing throughout the campus. Huang Jin mentioned, “There were thousands of people on the scene; all the students came out, shouting protest slogans.”
He further divulged that the entire protest lasted only a few minutes before the principal came out and blew a whistle, signaling for the students to return to their classrooms. He said, “We all went back.”
Huang Jin stated that ultimately, the students’ protest was ineffective, and the school still intended to enforce the ban, expected to commence next week or next month. He lamented, “There’s nothing we can do; the school doesn’t see us as individuals.”
He stressed that as students of a vocational school, they were not regular high school students, and the school should not excessively interfere with their personal lives.
It was reported that the school also planned to provide public telephones for student use, but some students were concerned that this could become another way for the school to make money.
As of now, the school has not issued a formal response to the incident. Attempts to contact the school by phone were unsuccessful.
The Yu Lin First Vocational Secondary School in Yu Lin City is the only state-controlled secondary vocational school directly under the Yu Lin City Education Bureau in Guangxi. It is located in the Shiziling Industrial Zone on Minzhu South Road (formerly Paibu South Road). Established in May 1958 as the Second Middle School of Yu Lin City, it was restructured into a vocational school in 1985 and renamed the Yu Lin First Vocational Technical School in June 1994, maintaining its current name since April 1997. The school currently has 3,000 students.
In addition to the incident at the Yu Lin school, on September 7th, students at the Weining Vocational Technical School in Bijie City, Guizhou, collectively protested against the school’s cellphone ban by waving their phones and damaging dormitory facilities. Prior to these events, similar protests had occurred at the Jiangnan Polytechnic School in Guangdong.