Discriminating Students

Danish Student Majken Thorsager (27) discovered when visiting her Norwegian boyfriend in January that she was not entitled to student discounts on rail fares in Norway because she has the wrong nationality. Her boyfriend has looked into the matter, and discovered that the guidelines for student discounts are drawn up by the Ministry of Transport. Only students studying in Norway are given the 50 per cent discount advertised by NSB. The Ministry of Transport freely admits that it is breaking the rules of the European Economic Co-operation agreement which stipulates that all discrimination on the basis of nationality is forbidden in the EEA countries. The Ministry now says it is considering changing the rules for student discounts to include students studying abroad.

Ceiling Falls on Desks

Two weeks ago a several kilo heavy plate belonging to the ceiling in the University Library fell eight metres onto one of the desks on the third floor of the library. If anybody had been hit by the plate they would have been seriously injured, possibly killed, says Jan Røstøen, chief engineer at Statsbygg. Statsbygg was in charge of constructing the building which houses the library, and which was inaugurated in 1999. Røstøen adds that this sort of thing is simply not meant to happen, and considers it highly unlikely that other ceiling plates fall down. The plate in question had been shortened in order to accommodate a girder, and cut so much that it no longer was an exact fit for the grooves. It has since emerged, however, that a second plate has crashed down from the ceiling on the ground floor.