It has been a bad week for Helsinki University with Helsingin Sanomat uncovering an alleged discrimination case by the faculty of theology. The incident comes after the university’s department of geography students dressed up like colonizers of a popular board game, Afrikan tähti (Star of Africa).
The Helsinki University geography department gave Tuesday a public apology concerning the incident.
Surprisingly, Jasmine Fantaa’s Instagram post, which was responsible for the incident of the geography students to go viral, was taken down and could not be accessed Wednesday.
The second discrimination case alleges that theology students of Islam with Finnish surnames were picked to teach at a school over students that did not have Finnish-sounding names.
An employee of the theology department had called on Monday possible candidates and told them he only called students with a Finnish surname.
The Finnish constitution prohibits discriminaiton on the grounds of a person’s background.
Antti Räsänen, the dean of the theology department, told Helsingin Sanomat that there was an investigation on the matter.
“If this has happened,” said Räsänen, “it is very discriminatory and should not happen.”