Part 1 – Bureaucracy in Ethical Clothing
The Paradox at the Gate
I begin this series with the first and perhaps most paradoxical question:
How can a university programme that teaches justice and equity operate through a rigid system of bureaucratic filtering?
In both applications I submitted — to Changing Education (CE) and Intercultural Encounters (ICE) — I encountered early-stage rejection through scoring models. In one case, I received a 2/10 in ‘applicability of previous studies.’ In another, I received 2/5 the previous year, and 4/5 this year, despite completing more than 35 ECTS aligned with the programme’s core modules. In neither case was my academic motivation read. In one, even my academic review was never opened.
Case Study: CE and ICE as Threshold Systems
This is not an issue of personal outcome. It is an issue of institutional design.
In December 2023, with 10 credits in neuroscience in education and my BBA, I first received 2/5 for applicability and 0 for ‘research methodology’ in the CE application. Therefore, my motivation, academic reflections, and learning reports were never read.
In January 2025, after completing 25 more ECTS directly in the CE curriculum, my score improved to 4/5—yet my ‘Motivation letter’ was scored 7/10, and my ‘Ability to produce scientific text’ was scored 1/3, without dialogue or feedback. I have not yet met the minimum score, even though my total score is over the thresholds of 12/23.
In ICE, I received 2/10 in applicability. Again, my motivation, academic reflections, and learning reports were never read.
Bureaucracy does not announce itself loudly. It moves through checklists, cut-offs, and score sheets — quietly deciding who gets to be seen. But the effect is loud: it echoes through opportunity, equity, and access.
When scores are allowed to stop a story from being heard, the gate is no longer educational. It becomes procedural. And justice, if it exists at all, becomes filtered, not felt.
Freire and Ahmed: When Theory Exposes Practice
As someone who studied ‘Education and Global Justice’ at the University of Helsinki, I recall a foundational reading: Tania Ramalho’s reflections on Paulo Freire. In it, Freire writes:
It is necessary to diminish the distance between what is said and what is done, so that our speech is our practice at a given moment.
If we teach global justice, but operate admissions through automated scoring that silences interdisciplinary, multilingual, immigrant learners, is our speech still our practice?
The contradiction here is not subtle. It is systematised. And the consequences are real.
What Is Justice When the System Filters Before It Reads?
In Changing Education, I was evaluated using, for example, a 5-point scoring system for ‘applicability’, where a score of below 3 in any category meant my application ended there. In Intercultural Encounters, a score below 4/10 in ‘applicability’ disqualified me from motivation or writing a review. Both programmes list ‘educational justice’ as a pillar. Both use procedures that erase context—bureaucracy dressed in ethics.
The rejection is not only of the applicant — it is a rejection of the very principles these programmes teach.
In a course titled ‘Feminist Approaches to Global Development,’ we studied Sara Ahmed’s work on institutional performativity. Ahmed challenges universities to ask whether their commitments to inclusion are embodied or merely aesthetic, whether equity is worn as a badge or lived as a practice.
Conclusion: What Is Said and What Is Done
What happens when the institution teaches decoloniality, but functions on the logics of colonial credentialism?
What happens when relational pedagogy meets score thresholds that do not read stories?
I do not write to shame. I write to ask.
“If institutions cannot diminish the distance between what is said and what is done, students like me are not just rejected—we are erased. And that is not justice. That is design. And if it is designed, then it can be re-designed.” –Hoa Rompasaari
We do not need to dismantle the entire system to start asking better questions.
We only need to admit that the architecture of admissions—the cutoffs, the filters, the silences—is not neutral. They are decisions, and every decision, whether conscious or unconscious, carries power.
I write not as someone who failed to enter. I write as someone who now understands the shape of the gate. In doing so, I ask not for entry but for reflection. Because when we teach justice but filter learners without reading their stories, we are not educating.
We are maintaining a performance. Education was never meant to be a stage; it was meant to be a mirror.
🪞 To the Reader — and to Myself
If you are reading this with curiosity, discomfort, or recognition, I invite you to pause. This is not an accusation. This is a mirror.
To the learner:
You are not failing because the system cannot see you. You are not inadequate because your path was different. You are standing in a lineage of quiet wisdom that does not always fit forms but always finds its way.
To the educator, reviewer, or gatekeeper:
May you remember that every score filters a story. That every unchecked box might hide a truth you weren’t trained to see. That justice is not administered through spreadsheets. It’s felt in how deeply we choose to read one another.
And to myself:
You did not shrink when the door closed.
You stood, wrote, asked, and kept your dignity intact.
That is enough. That is more than enough.
And from here, we do not wait for inclusion.
We create spaces where truth can be spoken — even if it isn’t yet welcome.
Let the right doors open at the right time.
Let the wrong ones remain closed with grace.
And let the path ahead be walked with clarity, courage, and calm.