The Student Ambassador’s newsletter Q4 2023
The Student Ambassador’s quarterly newsletter keeps you updated on how the Student Ambassador and many others are working to improve students’ legal rights and promote dialogue and understanding between students and the University.
New statements by the Ombudsman on access to documents
In autumn, the Ombudsman published two statements that may be relevant to know about in relation to future requests for access to documents from students.
In the case FOB 2023-25 (in Danish only), a student requested for access to exam papers. The University rejected the request to avoid situations that could be seen as cheating. In this situation, the Ombudsman assessed that this was not reason enough to reject the request for access to documents as the students were already allowed to bring, for example, descriptions of practice and academic literature to the exam.
In the case FOB 2023-37 (in Danish only), a citizen complained about a rejection of access to documents in a personnel case, in which personal matters about the citizen were mentioned. However, the Ombudsman found that “... access to own information does not only apply to the relevant employee of a case, but also to others whose personal matters are referred to in the personnel case in accordance with sections 8 and 21(2) of the Access to Public Administration Files Act.”
Enquiries in Q4
In Q4, the Student Ambassador received 139 enquiries. The majority of the enquiries were about exemption and legal complaints.
Usually, enquiries about dispensation from rules are from students who need exemption from one or more rules in order to continue their studies.
Many of these situations arise due to Illness or functional impairments, and the students often need extra time for exams, postponement of the maximum completion time or adjustments in teaching in order to make attendance accessible for them.
However, enquiries about exemption can also be related to other matters than illness and functional impairments. This may be students who are missing an exam that is no longer offered or who are applying for an additional exam attempt for reasons other than illness. It may also be students who have become delayed due to study challenges or the organisation of the degree programme, or that a student has lost a close family member, which has caused a delay in their studies.
Enquiries:
Exemption: 41.0%
Legal complaints 17.3%
Exam appeals: 12.9%
Bullying: 10.1%
Admission: 5.0%
SU: 5.0%
Other: 2.2%
Regulations: 2.2 %
Suspected exam cheating: 1,4%
Student counselling: 1,4 %
Thesis delay: 0.7%
Sick leave: 0.7 %
New students with functional impairments
On 2 November, we held our annual webinar for new students with functional impairments.
At the webinar, Student Ambassador Bo Gad Køhlert talked about the exemption options for this group of students and the special rules and guidelines for support available to them.
After the webinar, we became aware of a repot from the Danish Evaluation Institute: ‘First-year students’ experience of special educational support’ (in Danish only).
The report is summarised as follows:
"Many students in higher education need special educational support, and most of them are satisfied with the provided support. However, around four out of ten students in this target group, corresponding to 5,000 students, do not apply for support. Lack of support may have an impact on the dropout rate.”
Among this group of first-year students, the student ambassador also experiences that many of them hold back in relation to applying for exemption for course and exam adjustments.
That’s also why we are happy to offer the webinar to this group of students.
Situations caused by the conflict in Gaza
In the last three months, we have followed the media’s descriptions of discrimination of and aggressive behaviour towards minorities at the University that may be rooted in the conflict between Palestine and Israel.
We have received a few enquiries from students which fully or partly can be linked to the conflict. We try in the best possible way to help these students and provide guidance on:
- their options to talk with the relevant faculty’s student counselling or an employee in KUallies (and, in both cases, report incidents via the form REACH OUT or by sending an email to KUallies@ku.dk).
- how students, based on the University’s guidelines, can get help dealing with a situation concerning offensive behaviour from a lecturer or another student: KUnet > study information > Your student life > Support and guidance > Harassment, offensive behaviour and bullying.
UCPH course to write clearer decisions and emails to students
In October 2022, we held the third UCPH course on writing clearer decisions and emails to students.
18 employees from three different faculties had signed up for the course.
In agreement with UCPH courses, we will offer the course again on 10 October 2024.
The course description will be published in the course catalogue in the Employee Guide as soon as possible.