A low-income student who delivered takeout on campus was disciplined, and the school urgently halted it! Where exactly did this controversy go wrong?

Multiple impoverished students at universities ended up doing part-time delivery work around campus, using their spare time to deliver food; yet the school issued them a warning and disciplinary action. The news instantly sparked widespread discussion across the internet. After public opinion began to build momentum, the school quickly responded, saying, “The disciplinary process has been halted, and no actual punishment was carried out.” Although the outcome appears to be a reversal, it has made the controversy in this incident even clearer — is such handling truly reasonable? Why was the disciplinary process so arbitrary? The campus management loopholes it has exposed are even more deserving of everyone’s deep reflection.

The incident began with the helpless choices made by several impoverished university students. Most of these students come from families facing economic hardship. In their daily lives, they rely on student aid to get by, but when it comes to tuition, living expenses, and day-to-day costs, the aid alone is far from enough. To ease the financial burden on their families and also to gain more capital for independent living, they used their spare time to take part-time jobs delivering food within the campus. This income, earned through honest labor with their own hands, was originally proof of their efforts to live.

But unexpectedly, this lawful form of diligent work-study—intended to help them earn while studying—was deemed by the school to be “a violation of student dormitory management regulations and a negative impact,” and even led to the direct issuance of a disciplinary notice letter, proposing a warning as the punishment. You should know that, according to relevant regulations from the Ministry of Education, students’ work-study activities are a legitimate right protected by law. Universities should encourage and support students in improving their lives through lawful labor, rather than easily negating their efforts. Moreover, these students did not disrupt teaching order or infringe on anyone else’s rights and interests. The so-called “negative impact” is largely the school’s unilateral subjective judgment, with no substantive facts to support it. Even more critically, the disciplinary provisions the school cited are vague and general. There is no clear, publicly issued rule inside the campus that explicitly says “prohibiting students from delivering food within the campus.” The only basis is the verbal reminders given during new student orientation. This clearly violates the basic principle of “no punishment without clear, written law,” leaving students’ lawful rights and interests in a passive position.

As the incident continued to gain momentum and public pressure pushed the school to act quickly, the final decision was to halt the disciplinary process and not impose any actual punishment on the students. But this seemingly “corrective” outcome still could not conceal the arbitrariness of the entire disciplinary process—that is what is hardest for people to accept.

Looking back at the whole handling process: from the discovery that students were delivering food, to requiring the students to write guarantee letters, to the direct issuance of the disciplinary notice letter—none of the required standardized procedures were followed throughout. The school did not carry out any formal investigation or evidence collection, did not hear the students’ statements and defenses, and even failed to inform the students of the relief rights they had before making a disciplinary decision. This kind of operation—“first characterizing it, then looking for evidence”—is completely rough-and-ready management, treating students’ lawful rights and interests as disposable “attachments” that can be handled at will.

And after the media attention, the school’s “wrap-up” approach was similarly careless. A single line saying “the disciplinary process has been halted” provided neither an official written document, nor any formal explanation of the earlier mischaracterization or the improper procedures, nor any public apology to the multiple impoverished students who were affected. It also did not propose any measures to protect their rights. It is as if the disciplinary action were a “joke”—something they could impose if they wanted and withdraw if they wanted—completely disregarding the risks of students’ academic status records and reputational harm, and exposing an outdated mindset among some university administrators: “focus on control, ignore service.”

In this matter, the university’s management positioning has been completely misplaced. Universities are meant to be places that cultivate character and support student growth, and to safeguard students’ rights—not merely administrative control institutions. When it comes to the issue of students delivering food on campus, the school’s correct approach should not be an “all-at-once” blanket ban followed by punishments at the drop of a hat. Instead, it should proactively improve management rules: clarify the boundaries for students’ part-time work on campus, standardize the time, area, and vehicle management for food delivery, and even consider setting up dedicated on-campus work-study delivery positions. This would both address students’ needs for part-time work and avoid safety management risks.

But the school’s rough management is, in essence, a lack of management capacity and indifference to students’ rights. For students facing economic hardship, universities should assume responsibility for assistance. They should expand on-campus work-study positions and improve the aid system so that these students don’t have to face an impossible choice between “survival” and “violating rules.” Yet in reality, some administrators would rather suppress students’ right to labor using vague clauses than spend effort solving the practical problems. This kind of misplaced approach—putting the cart before the horse—completely deviates from universities’ educational mission and original intent.

Now that the school has halted the disciplinary action, it is only the starting point for resolving the issue, not the end. To truly calm this controversy, the school cannot stop at “temporary correction.” More importantly, it must produce substantive rectification actions. First, it needs to revise the vague campus rules, completely discard “pocket-style” fallback clauses, and clearly define the behavioral boundaries for students so that rules are public, transparent, and predictable. Second, it needs to standardize the disciplinary procedures, strictly following lawful processes such as investigation, hearings, and notifications, to protect students’ right to be informed and their right to present their defenses—so that every disciplinary decision withstands scrutiny under both law and reason. Finally, it must improve the support mechanisms, proactively pay attention to impoverished students’ living needs, and provide more lawful and compliant work-study opportunities, using concrete actions to fulfill its mission of educating students.

This incident should serve as a warning to every university: campus management is not “blanket control,” but rather something that requires warmth, rationality, and a mindset grounded in the rule of law. Only by truly respecting students’ rights, and by staying true to the educational mission, can campuses become havens where students can grow with peace of mind and work hard with confidence—not places where power is arbitrary and capricious. It is also to be hoped that all universities will take this as a lesson, prevent similar episodes of mismanagement from happening again, and genuinely safeguard the lawful rights and interests of every student.

（By / an observer from the human world）