Because unlike you I read the fucking article. In it, the author directly refers to the student as 'him' and 'he'; therefore it is safe to say, despite your politically ridiculous musings, that the protagonist is male.
The story refers to the article, the student, in the masculine form. In English, we do not have explicit masculine/feminine forms of adjectives, therefore the article, in this case a student, is a male as the story's author referred to the article as 'him', 'he' and 'his'. I simply do not understand what you are finding so hard about this, other than petty political correctness. QED.
Furthermore, it is totally irrelevant to the story itself!