This study explores Tibetan ethnicity by inquiring the language ideologies amid Tibetan students and their ongoing roles in molding ethnic limits at a Minzu University (MU). Tibetans’ ‘authenticity’ discourses are rooted in the same alterity and hierarchy principles under which minorities are subject to by the majority, that they inevitably marginalise and stigmatise certain ‘non-standard’ yet culturally Tibetan populations.