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University of Copenhagen
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»Ladies and gentleman,« Mille Mortensen said in the classroom with several non-binary students. And put her foot in it. She says that head of department Mette Sandbye's recommendations to ensure that all students are included would have been the help that she had needed.
Did a pipe burst somewhere? Have the lights gone out? Your key is missing? Who you gonna call? We met Claus 'Fusker' Hansen, go-to guy for students and staff at The Faculty of Health.
The university must appear politically neutral. So 1 May should no longer be a paid day off, the management argues. Moreover, says the university director, the University of Copenhagen cannot afford to have more off-days than other universities. Staff representative says that its abolition will backfire.
In an email to teaching staff, the management of the Department of Arts and Cultural Studies at the University of Copenhagen has sent out three pieces of advice to ensure that non-binary and trans people feel included in the classrooms. One of them is to use their name rather than a pronoun when the staff member has to talk about a student in the third person.
In 2018, tutors at the Faculty of Law at The University of Copenhagen were asked to drop a Mexico-themed intro party for new students after complaints of cultural insensitivity. This set off a national debate about identity politics and how to deal with offences. So what are this year's students supposed to do?
You probably know the hullabaloo: Every year, just around the start of the academic year, the traditional intro camps for freshmen are up for debate. There is too much drinking. Then it’s all about sex. Then the themes are inappropriate. But it is actually a new phenomenon that society outside the university holds an opinion at all about what happens among students.
Stories of sexism, drinking and crazy initiation rituals, a global #metoo movement and a set of guidelines on how to deal with offensive behaviour made the University of Copenhagen the centre of a stormy debate last year.
Student organisations are collecting signatures for new climate demands aimed at the University of Copenhagen. They include the closure of a research centre in oil and gas. University management rejects the demand with reference to the freedom of research.
For several months, a man called Anne up and shared his sexual fantasies about what he and Anne's male colleagues at the University of Copenhagen would do to her. And it did not stop there.
»I have been in a little bit of a wardrobe panic, but it ended up being what was at the top of the cupboard, because I thought there was really no reason to think too much about it.«
