Council meeting minutes from 2025-01-16

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

Plagiarism: Overall situation in faculty

Manu: Plagiarism is nowadays more commonplace. Seasoned TAs share this sentiment. More students use LLMs or solutions form previous iterations. Usually, first time they are caught they get 0 points on the assignment. Only after that they are excluded from the course. Manu feels that this is seen as "one free cheating attempt".
Allegations usually stay within examination boards and don't reach our ears.
Ferdinand: For other departments the examination board situation is similar. The head of the board can sometimes even decide by themself, thus making it even more unlikely that we hear about the case. Being CC-ed would be nice.
Alex: Speaking as first-time TA of TI. Students aren't adequately aware of the implications of plagiarisms and tend to be too relaxed regarding it. We already educate students during StEP. Alex thinks about having a course-covering central register of "first time caught cheating" incidents. However, he is explicitly against kicking people in the first instance. Having a register would have some issues attached, e.g. needing a unified definition of what plagiarism actually is.
Mona: Having such a register could be problematic in terms of privacy.
Kamila: Agrees with Alex' thoughts. She thinks that there are issues with how plagiarism is currently handled in group assignments. All people noted on the submission are all equally punished which she sees as unfair.
Manu: Each group member is supposed to be familiar with the submission. There was a concrete case in the past where the examination board made a decision.
Kamila: Members of a group can't necessarily find out how a submission was solved by fellow team mates and thus might not know that it might have been plagiarised. One lecture requires attendees to sign, thereby confirming that they were involved in working on the submission.
Manu: Lecturers can't require that from students.
Alex: Profs have different positions regarding this group issue.
Kamila: Being accused of plagiarism can rather quickly happen. Therefore, the "first attempt" at least addresses false positives.
Manu: Reaffirms that he is in favour of such a register given that it avoids students seeing the "first attempt" as a simple slap on the wrist. With how it's currently handled, students can happily cheat across various courses. Having plagiarism at our university might lessen its reputation.
Daniel: He suggests requiring caught students to do additional exercises, thus punishing them by requiring them to do more work.
Manu: Thus would put more work on the lecturers/TAs.

Manu: How to move forward?
Alex: In non-controversial cases lecturers should report students even in the first instance (thus implementing the register - privacy issues would need to be addressed).
Ferdinand: Examination boards should be able to see plagiarism records given that they are to body in charge and already have a process for handling cases and giving students the chance to raise their points.
Kamila: Students should be notified and have the ability to dispute.
Anon1: In Germany there's also self-plagiarism that could lead to issues in a register.
Alex: A unified definition of plagiarism cannot be implemented. Therefore, only uncontroversial cases should be recorded in this register.
Mona suggests contacting University's legal department to answer open questions.

Manu: Is there a consensus for such a register, assuming that it is implemented in a legal fashion? (in favour: 3, against: 0, abstaining: 6)
Given Alex's position as TA, he will have a talk regarding this anyway. Manu joins him and suggests contacting the study coordination and dean's. Nobody opposed.

Manu asks to be reminded given his alleged self-diagnosed dementia.

EML update

Simon is in the Great *insert eagle screech* US of A. Alex replaced him. Ferdinand and Alex talked to Valera yesterday regarding the concerns and complaints brought forward to us. Both stated that they were happy with the measures implemented. Apparently, we're understaffed in terms of ML. We are very glad that Valera is willing to nevertheless take care of the course. EML is quite a large course and even in the middle of semester there are still many submissions.
Alex reaffirms that the understaffing issue is very severe and Valera's investment is very commendable. There's the intention of having another professor to which Valera could hand over the course. Thus, she doesn't want to implement changes regarding its curriculum.
Her chair is occupied all summer semester with working on the course. However, she agrees that quality might differ across individual lectures. She would like a rotational schedule once a new professor is at university. She also agreed to helping with on-boarding of the new professor to speed up the process but help the new professor to find their groove.
Apparenly, EML time slot can't be moved. Manu suggests maybe raising that in a Dean's Lunch as the current slot is suboptimal.
Manu is of the opinion that these issues are mainly the responsibility of the university. However, we are of course open to provide professors with feedback.

SE-Lab

We received an email from the SE chair announcing changes to SE-Lab and asking for our position.

[FIXME: Changes will be added some time soon]

Kamila: Changes sound good. Hope that they are implemented.
Ferdinand: SE-Lab went even further than originally offered. Also hopes that the changes are implemented.

SE-Lab rental request of Verfügungsraum

The SE chair requested to book our Verfügungsraum for the next SE-Lab from 1st September to 2nd October 2025 between 08:00 and 18:00.
SoPranisten occasionally leave us some form of present. Footprints on the wall are not that appreciated but Pfand is.
Manu: Do we want to do that? (in favour: 9, against: 0, abstaining: 0)

Students' Council Elections

Candidates are now published at https://fs.uni-saarland.de/.
Manu sent a desperate-sounding message to our Discord and would like to know how effective this was. He wants to send a survey to candidates asking them from where they heard about the election.

Manu: Is anyone against such a survey?
Abigail volunteered to take prepare and spread of this survey.

Dishwasher Update

Manu lost it.
Lizzie and Kamila did not do their dishes. :'(

Ferdinand presented a curated list of dishwashers.

Several questions were raised, e.g. boot-up time of machine, …. For FIS, the 500 € machine should be no issue. The industrial 1200 € one could be argued for given the importance of having a functioning dish washer.

Visual Computing Room

During the Dean's Lunch we asked who the „Terrarium“ (E1.3 R0.31) belongs to. Attendees didn't know by heart. The Dean's office checked past contracts and confirmed that the room belongs to the Visual Computing study programme and therefore by extension the respective examination board.
Meowna is happy to hear that.
She suggests writing an email to the examination board and requesting to transfer authority over the room the the department.
Harry and Yagmur volunteered (after some light pressure) to write that email. Alex was voluntold to proofread the email.

Graduation Ceremony

Manu talked to Erich in the hopes of improving the graduation ceremony and making it “fancier”. Ferdinand reminded all present that there's the German tradition of the doctoral sword.
Due to legal restrictions, university may not pay for food at the event. We as the Students' Council used to contribute some money. We could do that again and ask the FdSI for additional contributions.

Examinination Boards

In April, most examination boards will be re-elected¹. The department would like to have pools of members that are active in multiple boards. Manu thinks that this might be overbearing for student members. He would also like to have members awarded CP since the students are essentially working for the university.
Ferdinand announces that he's open to being a member again. He also encourages all present to maybe join him though solid command of German is necessary.
Anton also threw his hat into the ring.

¹ Not Bioinformatics and Media Informatics