– We feel excluded

– It is very annoying that these things happen. We feel very excluded. There is good possibility that the international students will refrain from voting because of this, Lorena Ruiz Marcos declares.

She is a member of the International Student Union (ISU), and reacts strongly to the fact that the information about the Student Parliament election, which was circulated by email to all the students at the University of Oslo, contained no information in English. According to Marcos, it goes without saying that the information should be in both languages, and she fears that the lack of an English translation will lead to a poor turnout at the election.

She is not impressed over the way the political lists have chosen to promote themselves towards the international students.

– I cannot vote if I don’t know what the political fractions actually stand for. The impression the Student Parliament gives is that they have no interest in international students as voters, she adds.

– Appoint a translator

President of ISU Norway, Eton Williams, is very disappointed as well. He feels that the university as a whole should learn a lesson from this mistake.

– The university is doing a lot of good work, but they significantly need to improve their routines when it comes to communication of information to international students. I urge the university to appoint someone who can work specifically with this kind of information in order to make sure that something like this never happen again.

Chief of the International Education Office, Guri Vestad, says the Student Parliament generally does a good job for the international students.

– We are cooperating well with the Student Parliament regarding the situation of international students, and we think it is sad that they forgot the English translation. We cannot decide how they should do their communication of information, but we try to assist them as much as we are able to, she says.

Apologise

– This is a mistake and we are very sorry that it has happened, says Student Parliament leader Lina Johanne Strand, who apologise that the English translation was left out of the email.

– We have now asked the International Education Office to issue an English version of the email that was distributed, she says.

Strand points out that the Student Parliament does a lot to include international students, and that it is very embarrassing that something like this should happen in the middle of the election.