You have to join a Union or a nation, otherwise you are not entitled to take exams. At least, this is what the Department of Sociology said in an e-mail sent to new Master’s students. This occurred in spite of the obligation being abolished two years ago.
Two years ago, the Union and nation membership obligation at Swedish universities was abolished, which was greatly protested against by several unions and universities. But now it seems it wasn’t protested against by all.
New Masters’s students at the Department of Sociology in Lund received information where it said that a student actually has to be a Student Union member “in order to be entitled to participate at lectures, exams and to obtain a certificate.”
This was spotted after one of the affected students had contacted the Social Science’s Student Union, Samvetet.
“We gave the student the accurate information and clarified for the department that they had committed an error”, says Union President Nikolas Pieta Theofanous.
After a week’s confusion in which they tried to find out which course it concerned, the department found the answer. It concerns an advanced level distance course administration that received false information regarding the Union membership coercion regarding entitlement to take exams at the university, according to the Director of studies Axel Fredholm.
“We regret the emission of the false information. Clearly, this is not good. Now we have looked through all courses to make sure there’s no remaining misleading piece of information. What we do know is that one student has contacted the Union”, says Axel Fredholm.
The number of students having received the information is not certain at the time of publishing.
Are you going to contact the students affected by this error?
“I assume it’s already been done since we have been in contact with the Union continuously”, says Axel Fredholm.
How come you don’t contact the students directly?
“Since it only concerns one single person we’re not going to do that at the moment. But in case more students report this error, we will. We assume the other students are aware of the situation”, says Axel Fredholm.
Did you receive false information too? Contact us by clicking here
Text: Bengt Pettersson
Translation: Maximilian Aleman Tennell
