SHAANXI, China – A Chinese college is using a fatal New Year’s Eve stampede in Shanghai to justify its decision to ban Christmas celebrations on campus.

Three dozen people died and 40 were injured in a New Year’s Eve stampede in Shanghai’s Bund area, most of which were women, college students and children, GlobalTimes.cn reports.

On Monday, the Modern College of Northwest University posted a story on its website titled “Shanghai stampede tragedy proves our holiday management utterly correct” as a rebuttal to criticisms for banning students from celebrating Christmas in 2014, according to the news site.

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“If such a stampede occurred on Christmas Eve in Xi’an, the value of our college’s holiday management would be more self-evident,” according to the story.

The article suggested that students “oppose Western festivals and promote traditional Chinese culture,” the Global Times reports.

“We felt relieved not to see this tragedy happened in Xi’an on Christmas Eve, but we also grieved for the death of students from universities in Shanghai,” the story read. “Death has been hovering over cities for years. On New Year’s Eve in Shanghai, it found its chance.”

The story was published by the college’s Youth League Committee Office, which did not return calls from the Wall Street Journal Monday. The article has since been removed from the college’s website.

The developments follow a college campaign in December in which officials hung banners urging students to “be exceptional sons and daughters of China” and to “oppose kitschy Western festivals,” the WSJ reports.

Students were reportedly forced to stay on campus Christmas Eve to watch “patriotic videos and Confucius-related films” for three hours, Global Times reports.

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Several students spoke out against the college’s ban on Christmas, and its sordid justification.

“We think our college is shameless in taking advantage of this tragedy for publicity purposes,” senior Liu told the Global Times. “What happened in Shanghai had nothing to do with the college and it should not boast its holiday practices by belittling other universities, especially ones in Shanghai.”

Chu Zhaohui, a research fellow at the National Institute of Education Science, agreed, and said he believes the school violated the law while ignoring cultural integration.

“It is not appropriate for the college to justify its policy based on the stampede in Shanghai but should learn how to enhance students’ awareness of accidents and to improve their capability to deal with emergencies,” Zhaohui said.

Others lashed out on Chinese social media site Sina Weibo, calling the university’s crowing “ridiculous” and “cold blooded,” the South China Morning Post reports.

One poster wrote that “you may choke when eating” and reading the story, “so don’t eat anything.”

Another posted that “students cannot be controlled, but guided,” adding that “it’s so pathetic for university educators not to understand this and even be proud of it.”