Council meeting minutes from 2023-07-05

minutes of the students' representative council for study programs of computer science

Cryptography

We received some complaints regarding the Cryptography lecture that we already discussed in previous meetings. In general we were unhappy with the response we got from the responsible professors.
We had a discussion with the Professors of the Cryptography core lecture as we were concerned about its quality. After our last meeting, we were contacted by Prof. Stock, who also was interested topic. Although it was on short notice, we managed to meet up. He was able to organise a larger lecture hall for the retake of the mid-term exam. He also wants to talk to the lecturers about the availability of studying materials and setting up a mock exam so the students know what they can expect from the end-term. In general we perceived the meeting to be more productive and that our opinions were also heard.
After the last meeting we received multiple emails from multiple students with more information about the lecture, which was contrary to what the lecturers told us in our meet-up. One of the major concerns were that the in-person-lecture in fact is not well-received among the students. They voiced the issue that the exam content was hard to foresee with the given materials, as the exercise sheets etc. were mainly supplementary. Some said that Prof. Loss does not seem to prepare well for the lecture, e.g. struggling with proofs that are doable. The most recent feedback we received reports that there seems to be at least at least a little response from the lecturers in the last lecture regarding the set-up of technical devices.
Furthermore the library messaged us that they currently do not have copies of the Cryptography book, as they are all rented out. They think this is the because of the limited available of studying materials. After all, being able to bring the book to the mid-term seems to be a big advantage. The retail price of the book is ~100€, which is not easily affordable. Also the students did not return their books before the exams even though their rental period is over, which is a big issue for the library.
We voted whether we want to talk to the Dean of Studies about the problems of the lecture, asking of how we continue with this topic (8 in favour, 0 against, 0 abstaining).

Seminar Room (Verfügungsraum)

The Couches in the Seminar Room have stains of colour. We have contacted the responsible people so they clean it.

NEXT

On Tuesday we had an after-discussion with the other NEXT-organisers. It was a productive meeting considering it was very short-term. A few critical points were not discussed as some of our people were ill, so we will try to have another meeting soon. We will discuss the results internally in the NEXT-team and present them in an upcoming meeting.
There is also some clean-up to do, e.g. removing advertisement. Max will organise that (Daniel has already volunteered to help).

Breakfast

The Breakfast on 21st of July cannot take place as we do not have the necessarily manpower for the organisation. Furthermore the sponsor we planned for that day has not communicated with us.

Summer BBQ

Tomorrow our Summer BBQ will take place. Lukas gave us all information about the organisation. We need to have fire extinguishers ready as their is high risk of fire due to the recent dry weather. Also every asphalted street needs to stay clear to be used as emergency exit.
We will have 3 Schwenkers, one for pork, one for other kind of meat and one for the vegan options. The Math Student Council will provide drinks. Unfortunately we do not have many salads, but the FdSI will sponsor us cake.
You can find a shift plan in our Telegram group. All helpers will get some free food.

Cleaning Plan

Anton V. has created a cleaning plan. It will be publicly available, e.g. there will be a printout on our pinboard. Having cleaning duty does not mean that you have to clean the entire room every day, just make sure that it is orderly whenever you are at university. You are also explicitly allowed to order people to clean up after themselves. In case the cleaning plan does not work out, we will need to host another ticket party. If you are in the office and unplug cables, put the workstations back to their original state before you leave, or the system-administrators will make you regret that you did not.

Game Night

Manuel has built an application to track the amount of drinks sold at the game nights. Although it is not finished yet, we will use it at future game nights to better know when we will run low on storage.

Meeting Minutes

The Meeting Minutes face a conflict of interest. On one hand we would like to inform the students about as many things as possible, on the other hand being discrete gives us a better standing with the professors as they can trust us to keep important things private. If we discuss sensitive thing, we will not disclose them (e.g. names of students).
The person writing the protocol has lots of power over how the protocol reads just by the words they choose. To have a more balanced protocol, in future a person will always proofread the meeting minutes before it gets published. Furthermore we will try to give a short information on what the topic is about so people do not need to backtrack through previous protocols

FSK

Lukas attended the FSK, which is the conference of all Students' Councils at UdS. There were some relevant news from Maxime (AStA-Referent for Students' Councils) regarding the Students' Councils and other happenings at the University:
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Recently the elections for the 69th (nice) StuPa happended. The results can be found online. The constituent meeting will happen on July 10th at 6:30 PM at the Graduate Center. Everybody is allowed to attend this meeting. Hybrid participation will not be possible.

There are some relevant changes in the Statutes of the student body (Satzung der Studierendenschaft):
- The FSK is now an official body of the student body, which means:
- Only elected FSR members have voting rights in the FSK
- The FSK elects the election official for Students' Council elections
- The FSK has a "Right of First Proposal" (Erstvorschlagsrecht) for the election to the AStA-Officer for Students Council matters (Referat für Fachschaften)
- If the StuPa decides to change the general regulations for sutdents' councils (Fachschaftsrahmensatzung), the FSK has a Veto.
It is currently unclear when these changes will take effect as they need to be checked by the universities legal department which takes time.

Maxime who is the current head of AStA and has been the AStA-Officer for Fachschaften is laying down his work after a very long time. He was one of the main forces behind the final introduction of the FS-Euro. We thank him very much for his work.
Since the FSK can make a proposal for the new AStA-Officer for Students' Councils, we voted to propose David Bach to the StuPa. David is currently in the FSK of CoLi and has been in the FSR for Computer Science before. We are happy for a fruitful cooperation.

The FSK had a guest from the TV-Stud movement. They aim to get same working conditions for all HiWis in all of Germany. He makes us aware of the upcoming strikes in fall. If you want to connect with other people in this movement from Saarland, join their Telegram group: https://t.me/+tPfg5LpTSJE2Zjgy

The Mensa will soon setup something similar to a "Fairteiler", in which they will distribute leftover packaged dry goods (e.g. noodles, rice). This is intended for students in need who may suffer from rising prices and are struggling to make needs end. Please be considerate if and how much you take from there (In short: Don't be a dick)

Bioinformatics-Conference

A Bioinformatics-Conference will take place in Hamburg. We have been contacted by a Bioinformatics student from Munich on whether we would like to take part and discuss with other Bioinformatics students councils about the current topics. We already asked AStA on whether they would financially cover the travel costs. They agreed to do that with the usual amount, however they can only legally support student council members.
We unanimously decided that we would like to send Manuel to represent our university there, as he is currently the person that takes the most bioinformatics-lectures.