LSE under fire for sending “racist” Kung Fu Panda emails to students

London School of Economics has come under fire for calling new students “Kung-Fu Pandas” in an email.

It all started when hundreds of prospective LSE students got emails due to a glitch in the university’s email system.

The message said: “This is to certify that A-a [sic] Kung Fu Panda Tiger Test Test has firmly accepted an unconditional offer of admission to the London School of Economics and Political Science for the full-time, three year programme of undergraduate study.”

Christy Pang, one of the students who received the email, told the Tab newspaper: “I thought it was some kind of racist joke at first, but it turned out to be some sort of a test.”

Good luck explaining this mess-up pic.twitter.com/zO7eS2dPEL

— Casey Chan (@caseychanuk) August 29, 2014

A spokeswoman for LSE told the Standard:  “A welcoming e-mail that LSE sent out to some successful applicants contained an error as a result of a technical problem with coding in the database used. This meant that the e-mail did not pick up some of the fields correctly.

“For example, instead of inserting the applicant’s name, the email included the name from a test record which is ‘Kung Fu Panda’. The use of this ‘name’ merely reflects that a member of staff who set up the test record is fan of the film. The e-mail was sent to all students and did not target students from any particular background.

“An apology e-mail was swiftly sent out when the error was detected and the correct welcome e-mail was sent later the same day.

“Other test names used by LSE include ‘Piglet’, ‘Paddington’, ‘Homer’, ‘Bob’ and ‘Tinkerbell.’”