Council meeting minutes from 2024-09-25

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

FabLab on campus

Max L. has visited us to introduce the FabLab located on the first floor of the recently opened Innovation Center [sic!] to us. FabLabs are places or rather workspaces where people are offered access to various machines used for fabrication; especially this FabLab has quite the impressive hardware including for example machines for FDM/SLS/SLA. He highlights that the FabLab on campus is logistically very accessible to students in contrast to other facilities in and around Saarbrücken.

Manu raises that until now he has never heard of this offering and appreciates Max L. introducing it to us. He wishes for more easily accessible information online – mainly a website which currently does not exist yet. He especially remarks that is not obvious that the FabLab is open to all students of university and that its services are not limited to only those interested in founding a company.

Max L. asks us to advertise the FabLab and suggests contacting FabLab's team. He would appreciate if we could offer them a slot in our StEP. Another idea might be a “semester project” (he explicitly referred to one Student Group recently mentioned in one of our minutes) where students voluntarily and independently work on a project.
There's some hesitation regarding offering a slot in our StEP on such short notice; but for example only showing a slide should be no issue.


Addendum: After our meeting has concluded a delegation of Students' Council members took up Max' offer and visited the FabLab and talked to its maintainer. They were very open to having some kind of cooperation and would love to have some Computer Science students as regulars of the FabLab.

KIF 52.5

We voted on whether to dispatch Jenny and Alex to KIF 52.5 and voted in favour unanimously. Since most meeting's attendees were of the opinion that AStA covers expenses only for elected members, this means that there is still one vacant slot. Therefore, if another elected member would like to attend KIF they may take up this slot on a first-come-first-serve basis. Note that if you'd like to receive a T-Shirt free of extra charge you'll have to order until the end of this month.

Bachelor Plus MINT's Students' Council

Bachelor Plus MINT's students' representative council currently has no room and sent an email to us asking for support to get one. The Aquarium in E1.3 is currently unoccupied and might be of use to them. Although we had doubts to which extent this room is suitable for council work we agreed that in the end this question should be left to their members to answer.

We agreed to ask Nicolas to take care of asking the department's administration. In case he doesn't have time for that, we'll ask next Dean's Lunch.

FSR goes Christmas Market

It was suggested to go the Christmas Market together. Manuel states that last year there has been an excursion to France as well (although there were some “memorable moments” thanks to the trains). He stated that he is very much in favour of having this kind of event again. Daniel and Max concurred.

Manuel “felt responsible” (according to his own words) and would like to take care of planning this event. Also, he wouldn't mind opening it to all people associated with the Computer Science department.

Global Game Jam

We were contacted by a former student of Saarland University via e-mail that they would like to host a Global Game Jam¹ session in which students collaboratively develop a prototype game. One motivation to host this at university was that the person kind of missed application-centered courses at university and believes that this type of event would be a great opportunity for greenhorns to dip their toes into developing prototypes and realising project ideas.
Specifically, they are requesting our help to provide a room.

The event would be Fr 2025-01-24 noon to Su 2025-01-26 noon. They will try to offer this event free of charge.

One present member had concerns that this might be a covert recruiting event. However, other members think that this is not a real danger. And since we also support other types of events like for example in competitive programming, a GameJam might be a nice addition.

Alex volunteered to reply with an e-mail explaining how to organise rooms.

¹ https://globalgamejam.org/

Hobby and Leisure Fair

Given that we are no longer affiliated with Next, hosting some other kind of fair would be nice. Max introduced the idea of having a fair where clubs („Vereine“) in Saarland can present themselves to students in hope of acquiring new members. He asks us for our general opinion.

Manu has reservations as he reckons that this type of event requires quite some effort to plan and conduct. Alex offers his support but highlights that he will have less time than for previous events. Daniel is pointing out that many of our students are not from Saarland and might switch universities for their Master; on the other hand people from Saarland already know of clubs and thus wouldn't really benefit from the event. Max thinks that even students from other regions can benefit from being in a club since umbrella organisations can aid in switching to a sister club once they move out of Saarland. Ferdinand states that there are already enough Computer Scientists in his rowing club.