Council meeting minutes from 2026-10-16

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

StEP Feedback

As this semester's StEP is now over, we want to collect feedback for how things went.

We will set up an internal document to collect feedback from everyone and will then discuss it in a future meeting.

System Architecture Reexam

Intro:
We have received multiple emails complaining about the workload-to-time ratio of the reexam being unreasonably more difficult to manage than during the main exam and also know of multiple people that have taken the course that claimed that it was harder than the main exam.

The results for the reexam have been released already.


Discussion:
One possibility would be to check the exam statistics first to see if there is a general trend visible. Afterwards, we can act accordingly.
As we currently do not have access to the exam statistics, we will have to contact the respective lecturer first.

Additionally, we could maybe ask to see the grading scheme or the exams themselves. If necessary, we could also meet up with the lecturer in person to view everything.


Conclusion:
We will contact the professor first to try and get the exam statistics. Afterwards, we will take the appropriate steps.

Graduation Ceremony

Intro:
Next week Friday (October 23rd) the SIC Graduation Ceremony is taking place.
They will need some help from us (1 or 2 people) roughly from 2pm until around 7pm with e.g. tickets or pouring drinks.

It was noted that traditionally, we do have some responsibility for helping them.


Conclusion:
We already had multiple people present at the meeting that are able to help out. We will contact the responsible people to let them know.

KIF 54,5 Bochum

Intro:
The next KIF (Konferenz der Informatikfachschaften) will take place from 17.11.26 until 22.11.26.

The conference is mainly about having some exchange between the different German, Austrian and Swiss CS Students' Councils (e.g. to share current issues).
Around half of it is actual work (e.g. workshops), while a large portion of it is also meant for socializing.


Discussion:
Of the people of us that want to go to the KIF, the costs (travel and a place to stay) for 2 elected members can be reimbursed. We have also had the FIS sometimes pay for voluntary members in the past.
Food will generally be provided at the event.

It was noted that the sleeping conditions are not necessarily the best, so people that want to go may also want to consider looking for alternative places to stay at.

Not being able to speak German should most likely not be an issue (based on past experiences).


Conclusion:
For now, we will just say that everyone who is interested in going, should just sign up already. We can still decide later on who gets reimbursed, but the (hard) deadline for submitting the respective form is 2 weeks before the event.

FSR Breakfast

Intro:
Traditionally, we roughly have one breakfast per month. The question is, whether we still want to have one in October or not.


Discussion:
Since it is already the middle of the month, this might be on too short notice. An alternative could be to plan one for the start of November.

Pro (doing it later):
Technically, we already had a breakfast recently for the StEP and soon there will also be a Pub Crawl, potentially leading to less helpers.

Con (doing it later):
We also have to keep in mind that the Nikofete will be at the start of December, so if the breakfast only happens later in November then those 2 events could be too close to each other again.

Pro (doing it still in October):
Since it's still close to the start of the semester, an early breakfast could be a better opportunity for the new students to socialize.


Conclusion:
We will have a poll for the rough time frames to get an idea for how many people would be available. Based on this, we will make a decision.
We also already assigned a responsible person for the next breakfast either way.

Deans Lunch

Once per semester, we have a Deans Lunch in which we discuss larger issues that came up since the last time (with the deans as well as some other people of the faculty).

The last Deans Lunch was not that long ago, so for now we just assigned a responsible person. We will also try to start collecting topics to discuss soon.

Online Support Task Force

Intro:
We are still struggling with too many unresponded tickets in Zammad.


Discussion:
We still need more people in the Online Support Task Force, but we also think that the system as a whole just needs to be changed somehow.

The system that was introduced of assigning tickets to groups in Zammad that correspond to the respective Task Forces has not helped.

It was briefly mentioned to (theoretically) have the Online Support Task Force be similar to the StEP task force, in the sense that it is more so intended to act organizational for everyone.

We need a system where *everyone* looks at tickets at least to some extent.
A proposal which was brought up again, was to have a regular scheduled time slot for taking care of some tickets together. This is meant as an *additional* way to work through tickets and is NOT supposed to replace the current system entirely.
This approach is not popular, but it could at least potentially help creating good habits. And since we do not have any alternative ideas at the moment, trying this is better than nothing.


Conclusion:
We will presumably try to implement the approach described above in some way.
We will also take care of some open tickets directly after this meeting.

Meeting Minute Workshop

This is mostly just an informative topic for the Council.

There has been a negative trend in the quality of the meeting minutes recently.
Because of this, one of us wants to organize a workshop to help against this (to take away "fear", give tips etc.).

This is tentatively planned to be towards the end of November.

There will presumably be some material and maybe even an article in our Wiki afterwards.

FSR Picture

There is a tradition of taking a picture of every iteration of the Students' Council (see the ceiling in the Council room), however we have not taken one of the current Council yet.

One of us has a nice camera, so we will try to find a time slot to meet up and take the picture.