We hadn’t actually planned on meeting up with the University of Helsinki’s Chancellor, let alone doing so in a noisy beer hall in the Finnish capital.
But our chance meeting turned out to be one of the most illuminating in a week where the big question was often “what’s really going on here?”
Kaarle Hämeri had overheard some of our group discussing the things they’d come across on our SUs study tour – where forty or so students’ union officers and staff have spent the week visiting countless students’ unions, councils, guilds, nations and corporations across the Baltics and Finland – and couldn’t help getting into some engagement with us on the state of the sector.
It wasn’t quite like bumping into one of the ceremonial celebrities that fulfil the role in the UK – here the Chancellor is an elected academic who, separate to the (elected) Rector, is put in charge of promoting science and scholarship and the university’s community relations, as well as overseeing the university’s interests and activities.
And given that under the country’s Universities Act he has the right to be present and speak whenever the government considers matters that have a bearing on the institution, if anyone knows what’s going on, it’s Kaarle.
