Sheung Shui school apologises after black-underwear remark

9th September 2026 – (Hong Kong) Fung Kai Liu Man Shek Tong Secondary School in Sheung Shui has apologised to affected girls and activated its crisis procedure after an assistant vice-principal was accused of asking female pupils at a start-of-term hall talk whether wearing black underwear was meant to “attract male classmates and male teachers”.

A Threads post that spread online alleged the remark was made on the first school day, 1st September, while the whole female cohort sat through a lecture in the assembly hall. The language was branded inappropriate and akin to sexual harassment. The row kept growing as students carried the claim onto discussion forums, keeping the unnamed assistant vice-principal at the centre of campus anger even though neither the school nor the Education Bureau has publicly named the officer.

According to the same online account, the official first addressed the storm publicly only on Monday, 7th September. Pupils who heard him said he soft-pedalled the episode, framing the warning as a safety message about dark underwear under school uniform and insisting his meaning had been misunderstood. Many girls, the poster wrote, rejected that defence as lacking sincerity and refused to accept that the original words had been twisted out of context.

The school said today that the talk had covered school rules and uniform appearance standards. Once it learned that parts of the lecture were being debated online, management met all female students on Monday, went through the content again and offered a heartfelt apology to those affected, while urging anyone who needed help to speak to teachers or social workers. Officials said they were taking the matter seriously, had started the school-based crisis handling mechanism and were supporting pupils who required it.

The Education Bureau confirmed it had received the school’s report, understood the campus was dealing with the case under its own rules, and would stay in close contact to give suitable support and advice. No finding of misconduct has yet been announced — leaving the apology, the Monday re-briefing and the bureau’s watching brief as the public record so far of how a uniform lecture about underwear colour became a harassment row on day one of term.