Council meeting minutes from 2023-07-12

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

Maths Prep Course

The Maths Prep Course for new bachelor students will take place soon.

We were visited by two of the figure heads who asked for financial support. The FIS proposed a budget of ~300€. Unfortunately this is a tighter budget than we would like and in future we try to increase that budget.

We voted on that matter (11 in favour, 0 against, 1 abstaining).
The money is basically free for use, except there is on hard alcohol allowed. We will check whether the Math Prep course can use the FS-Euro to use this budget.

Cryptography

Cryptography this year was suboptimal and we received a lot of complaints about the general organisation, the availability of materials, the midterm exam, and we also did not like how they responded to our discussion with the lecturers.

Today, we talked to the deans of study about the lecture. After we explained the issues in detail, we discussed how we can improve the lecture short-term and in future. These are the main points we took away:
- There is probably little possibility to help the students in this iteration
- There exist digital copies of the book, we might identify the important chapters and prepare printouts of them. This is a far from optimal solution, and the lecturers would need to agree with it.
- Prof. Maggio will send an email to the lecturers, asking them to prepare a mock exam
- Have another E-Mail/Meeting, agreeing that the semester went suboptimal, and discussing how to make the student happy.
For the next year, we will stay on that topic, discussing it further with Prof. Loss
- We think a lecture should have at least one of the three things for being able to prepare for an exam: lecture recordings, a script, or very detailed slides.
- The Qualis evaluation probably will be very rough, the department can try to get different lecturers, but we would have need some volunteers for that.
- The CISPA is also interested in good lectures, so there probably things will happen internally.
- Stay in contact to Prof. Stock, who is responsible for teaching quality and very active in that regard. He can actually do something about this.

Voting during Meeting

In recent meetings it happened that we lost quorate during our meeting. For students it would be kind of weird to witness that four people decided relevant things for all students.
One solution is challenging the quorum during the meeting, on the other hand some things need to decided fast. Another solution would be to use an internal mailing list for voting, as it is easily documentable. Furthermore other types of voting online is not allowed by university law.

E-Mails can be quickly answered, so it would not be a huge effort to do it this way. However, if the necessity shows up (the quorum being challenged, which happens rarely), it probably is a highly debated topic and some people do not feel comfortable with a vote if not everyone has voiced their opinion.

We voted on the following options all assuming we did not have a quorum in a meeting:
(1) allowing voting via Email in general,
(2) voting via Email in time-critical situations without having discussed it in a meeting,
or (3) only allow it in time-critical situations after discussing it in a meeting.

We will vote on every topic, the one with the most "in favour" wins. We voted on that matter:
In favour of 1: 3
In favour of 2: 10
In favour of 3: 10
In favour of no online voting at all: 2

Tie-breaker between option 2 and 3, with one vote each:
(2): 7
(3): 4
Abstentions: 1

Thus: In future, we will be voting via Email in time-critical situations without having discussed it in a meeting.
Lukas will hold a test vote to see how well this works.

In future it might be an idea to create a public regulation where we once and for all clarify all voting related things.

Alumni-Presentations

The Maths plans to have a presentation series by Alumni to present how their life went and what they are doing right now.

We think this is a good idea, especially as it university is all about scientific things, which is not the only path of possible career. Anton V. will reach out to the FdSI to ask what they think about this idea.

If this gets well received we might to have a task force about it.

Summer BBQ

Last week we had our Summer BBQ, which went really well with great weather etc.

The people from the dance studio were well received and offered a lot of fun. They also were happy and offered to also come next year.

We have a loss of ~800€, which is not nice, but okay since it was also the planned loss in the FIS budget plan.
Also we messed up during the organisation, but overall it is not a big thing. We have a lot of pictures of the day, and will use them on our website. Furthermore the clean-up could have been better.

We thank all the organisers and the helpers.

Student Working Rooms

Today we received an email where a person observed that people in the student working rooms are not considerate and disturb other people in their work by being loud. They asked us on whether we could do something about it, e.g. hanging up quiet signs.

We think the working rooms should in general be quiet, but not all necessarily need to be silent, so discussions in normal volume should be okay.

If you want complete silence, you can go to the library. Nevertheless we will hang up some signs. Max will take care of that.

Study Situation Questionnaire

There will be a questionnaire about the current study situation by the department. We think it is a good way to provide feedback on how you feel about studying here, so we strongly encourage students to fill it out. In the end, the department can use the results improve the study situation.

We voted on whether we want to advertisement:
- 8 in favour
- 0 against
- 3 abstaining

Some of us are confused about the exact goals of the poll.

Shirts

Max gave us an update on the current design of the new student council shirts.

We plan to order some additional shirts without name, so helpers can lend it at events. It is planned to have an university logo on there, however the Owl is a branded image and it is forbidden to use it if you are not a subgroup of the university. Luckily this does not apply to us.

We designed them on a website, and the all-in-one product is kind of expensive. We might go to a local printing company and just provide them with the shirts and only pay the printing.

Game Night

The game night will take place on Friday. We thank all the people who filled out the doodle.

We also have the idea to re-purpose the tea wagon from GHH that is never used.
We plan to store all the digital stuff for a game night. The digital gaming station would be easier to transport and easier to use. We might store it in the cellar of E1.7.

We plan to finish this project in the next 3 months. If it is not finished by then it will be returned to GHH by Lukas.

Recap of Summer Semester

We all had a stressful semester, so we spent a few minutes recapping our events. In general the events drastically increased, both in quality as well as in quantity.

Also we used the opportunity to do Day-Drinking.