More graduates from Hong Kong Polytechnic University turned up in masks to receive their degrees on Wednesday to protest against the management’s handshake snub for those who covered their faces, defying a warning that students who disrupted graduation ceremonies would be asked to leave.

According to students who attended the faculty-based ceremonies, which were closed to the press, dozens of bachelor and master graduates wore surgical, black or even gas masks in defiance of reminders that they would not receive a handshake from the department heads if they chose to do so on stage.

The session for the applied social science department in the afternoon saw at least 70 of the 200 attending graduates wearing masks.

Some of the graduates also held up their palms on stage to symbolise the five demands in the ongoing anti-government demonstrations, sparked by the now-withdrawn extradition bill, as a show of support for the arrested students, and to protest against university president Teng Jin-guang for snubbing two mask-wearing graduates on Sunday.

Photos and videos taken by the students also showed a few of them brandishing protest banners or a black Hong Kong flag on stage, while dozens sang the protest theme song Glory to Hong Kong when the national anthem March of the Volunteers was played during the ceremony.

Outside the ceremonies, about 100 graduates participated in a mask-wearing flash mob, many in Guy Fawkes masks, a symbol of anti-totalitarianism, and marched around the campus on Wednesday afternoon to voice discontent against the university management.

Mo Tse, 29, who did not cover his face but raised his palm offstage, said while he received a handshake from the department head, other masked students were snubbed.

A university spokeswoman said on Wednesday that graduates had been “reminded not to wear any face mask when they are on stage” before the ceremony, as those who “do not follow the protocol will not be capped by the presiding officer and the senior staff concerned will not shake hands with them”.

“Participants in the graduation ceremony should respect the rights of all graduates and attendees and should not take the ceremony as an occasion to make political appeals,” the spokeswoman said. She added that if there were “disrespectful behaviours” that disrupted the ceremony’s process, those who were involved might be requested to leave the venue.

The Post had contacted all other seven publicly-funded universities on whether actions would be taken if students wore masks during graduation ceremonies.

Three did not reply by press time, while the remaining four universities did not specify if actions would be taken, with Baptist University saying it would “adopt measures according to the actual circumstances”.

Meanwhile, dozens of students at the Open University pleaded on their knees with president Wong Yuk-shan to issue an open letter to support schoolmates arrested during the protests and to condemn the alleged police violence in their dispersal operations.

The dramatic scene came after the students boycotted a closed-door dialogue session with senior school management and staged a sit-in outside the venue.

More than 10 students knelt for 15 minutes to appeal to Wong in the subsequent open dialogue, after he repeated that the rule of law and legal proceedings should be respected.

Wong later issued an open letter on Wednesday evening, where he said the university had “tried its best to follow-up student arrest cases” as it cared about all students’ safety regardless of their political stance. The letter did not touch on police violence as it reiterated that “all violence behaviours” were opposed.

At the University of Hong Kong, a group of students vowed to take matters to the head’s office on Friday if the school refused to set up a dialogue session to hear their concerns over police brutality claims.

Students slammed university president Zhang Xiang for not making substantial response to a petition calling for him to issue a statement condemning police’s treatment of arrested protesters that was signed by over 3,400 students, alumni and staff.