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Law student poster pokes fun at homeless

Student discussion club at the Faculty of Law under fire after plan for theme party where guests are encouraged to dress up as 'creditor' or a 'debtor'

Although the poster that sparked off the initial online rows over the party has since been retracted by the organisers, the event page has roughly 200 comments – both for and against the poster and the party.

The poster was produced by Juridisk Diskussionsklub (JD), a discussion club for students of law at the University of Copenhagen, who are hosting the creditor/debtor party on Friday 14 March.

According to JD’s Facebook page the poster was meant to be joke, but in retrospect they claim that they ‘had taken it too far’ and have since apologised in a post that, at the time of writing this article, has sparked another 156 fiery comments, for and against.

Political correctness v. class war

As one critic puts it: “The idea of stereotyping and putting down ‘the poor’ and those that owe money, is such an extreme and privileged way to uphold your status as a higher social class, that I cannot take the [organisers, ed.] apology seriously”.

“Political correctness is disgusting!” writes Sebastian Rønsdal, defending the original poster. And Jonas Kesagake voices his disagreement with the theme: “So it’s great when people are indebted to you, you say? Well, I’ll come to the party dressed as the Robin Hood of the global underclass…”

There has been a couple of attempts at peacemaking among the comments. Leif Donbæk, who describes himself as “4th semester and proud JD-member” suggests that part of the money made from selling beer at the creditor/debtor bash should go to support the homeless.

‘Law students do lots of voluntary social work’

“…I know that law students take on vast amounts of voluntary social work, but I think that we might have to be better at showing everyone that this is the case and change their – occasionally slightly stereotypical – view of us,” he writes.

Follow / join the discussion on Facebook here.

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