Students at one university in Hunan province are now free to go back to the library in their miniskirts and hotpants.

Last week, officials at the Hunan Agricultural University ignited a ruckus on campus and online with a notice placed outside the library which forbid students from entering the building if they were wearing pants or skirts that were shorter than 50 centimeters.

The ban apparently followed a complaint from one male student who said that the way female students were dressing was “disrupting” the library’s “studious atmosphere” and even accused the women of “sexual harassment.”

However, the student’s viewpoint on the issue ended up being quite in the minority. Quickly, the notice set off outrage on campus and soon found its way to the Chinese interwebs where it beget yet more furor with students and netizens arguing that women should have the freedom to wear what they want and that the male complainer has no clue what sexual harassment really is.

The outrage caused the university to quickly change course. On Saturday, the school posted an apology onto Weibo, welcoming students back to the library, just so long as they behave themselves and don’t wear flip-flops.

At times some Chinese universities can become bizarrely puritanical. Back in March, “PDA police” dressed in camouflage uniforms were deployed on a Shandong college campus to punish couples caught canoodling.

A few years ago, another vocational university in Shandong province also made headlines for its code of conduct which said that those students caught holding hands on campus would be punished by being made to clean the bathrooms.

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