Council meeting minutes from 2023-01-14

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

Constitutional Meeting

Katharina Drängler from the AStA joined the Meeting to constitute the new Student Council. Every elected member accepted their election. Furthermore we were required to elect people for two jobs:
Referent für AStA-Geräte und AStA-Etat (Person for AStA-Equipment and AStA-Money: Alex, Max
FSK (Conference of all university students councils): Lukas, Vikram

Afterwards Katharina handed the Moderation over to Clemens, who gave as oldest Council Member a little speech, where he thanked all people for their Commitment to the student council, but also reminded us to also continue with our studies.

FIS

Nils gave us an Introduction to the FIS, which is the association that manages our money. Basically they will give us money iff it is useful for students. We should keep book over all our expenses.
Either you ask beforehand for money, or you send them the receipt. Important: Ask first whether they will sponsor the expense, and only buy after their approval.
What is really important is every money we obtain or spend needs to put in the cashbox. Furthermore there are log papers inside in which you need to enter every transaction. The money in this Box is really important, as we have expenses and intakes, which all go to the tax office, who will track everything and might increase our taxes.
There will be a guide to everything in our Wiki.

Rooms

The student council has a total of three rooms, to which every council member has access (write Manuel if you currently do not). There exists the Mampfkasse, which offers food and snacks for council members only. The main room has a kitchen and a microwave. DON'T PUT METAL INTO THE MICROWAVE. There is a dishwasher with a usage flowchart, next to that there is a fridge. Everything in there is for free, unless it is labelled with a name. When you open something (e.g. milk for the coffee machine), write down the opening date, so we can know when something has gone bad. There are working places in our office.

Voluntary Members

The student council also has voluntary members, which usually are former council members or people that want to become members in the future. We trust these people so much that they also have room access etc. as they usually helped us out a lot during events etc.
We have voted on all council members of last year and present other voluntary members. Chosen as voluntary members have been: Simon, Nils, Nicolas, David, Lisa. Not chosen as voluntary member have been: Ayush.

Task Forces

There are multiple Jobs that are necessary for the Student Council to work properly, here is a full list of the task forces taking care of them:
- Moderator: Person who is moderating the meeting, The substitute used to be planning the meetings: Manu, (Sophie), Subst: Anton
- Minute Taker: writes the meeting protocol: Anton
- System Administrator: We have a website, a printer, three servers etc., which all need upkeep. Basically all the installations in the rooms are maintained by the sysadmins. It is nice if you know some stuff about networking, programming, etc. but it is not mandatory at all. The sysadmins are happy to help you get used to the work, and are happy if you would join them.
- Mailing List Admins: We have multiple mailing lists, which need to be maintained, e.g. for social events.
- Printer: We have a printer available to all students for free (up to a limit). Managing a printer is not that trivial, the printer is located in Room 013. It needs to have paper refilled, the printer managed on the internal side, for which both have acquired and ourselves written printing software. We also offer a thesis printing service, which works on a best-efford basis. If you print your thesis, you need to pay (although it is a lot cheaper than in a copy shop) for it, for which there is some bookkeeping necessary. We have a collaboration with the library, which offers to bind the thesis.
- Social events: we are doing social events, e.g. game nights. Usually there is a pub crawl every 2 months. The planning of all the social events is annoying to do alone, but in a group it is a lot of fun. There are plans to host a LAN-party this semester.
- Poster design: we design our own posters for events. It is nice if you have some pre-knowledge about designing, but we will help you out if not.
- NEXT: The event where all the money comes from. It is a big job fair, all organised by us (from contacting the companies, renting the rooms, etc.). When being part of the NEXT-task forces, you will get a lot of behind-the-scenes insight about university organisation and communication with companies.
- Social Media/PR: We have multiple social media channels, e.g. discord, our website, twitter etc. We need people taking care of these.
- StEP: At beginning of each Semester there will be the StEP, where we will give the new students a crash course on how to study, how university is organised and the study regulations. There is a international StEP designed for Master Students, who need less help on how to study but more on how it is to live in Germany.
- Busy Beaver: We award the Busy Beaver award for outstanding lectures. For these we need to evaluate some data (usually the Qualis evaluation) and ask some students about feedback for their courses.
- Snail Mail: Maintain the letterboxes, empty them regularly and check what the letters contain.
- Anti-Discrimination: Self-explanatory, ranges from racism, religious discrimination up to sexism. Usually most people know how to behave, but there have been some incidents in the past. The Email adresses of the members will also be published, such that they can be contacted personally by affected people.
- Exam Collection: We collect thought protocols of exams. Ask people after their Exams for what they remember about it
- FSK: Lukas, Vikram
- Online support: we have a ticket system called Zammad. People will write to us, we will need to answer their emails containing various issues and requests.
- Repetitorial: Preperation Course for the math lecture reexams.
- Breakfasts/Nikofete: We have regularly breakfasts, which need to be organised. The Nikofete is basically a christmas themed breakfast. You need to have a car to buy ingredients. The breakfasts are well visited, and we would like to offer them regularly again.
- SummerBBQ: in July there is the SummerBBQ, which is a big event that needs to be organised, from assigning shifts, buy the food, etc. There often attend >100 people.
- Cleaning: Self-explanatory, Look after the rooms. This does not require you to do the job of the cleaning personell, but take care/remind people to leave the rooms orderly.
- Student Seminar room: We provide Hardware for the seminar rooms. Not a big task, just take a look at each device and have backup.
- Mampfkasse: Food and Snack service for council members, as it is impossible to find something to eat at university after 6pm. Needs to be restocked regularly (so you need a car), and you need to remind people that they need to pay for their taken food.