Council meeting minutes from 2023-09-13

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

Statistics Lab

There have been complaints about the end-term exam of the statistics-lab lecture. It was mainly about exercises never being practised before and it being too math-heavy and not so much about statistical methods. Overall the passing percentage was really low (~20%).
We have already talked to the lecturers, who showed us the exam and the exercise sheets. There have been exercises similar to the exam questions. We also do not think the exam was too hard, there even was a preparatory sheet with lots of questions to work on. Students also complained that there were too many example proofs and not enough derivations/calculations, which we cannot really understand as usually the proofs are more difficult.
The only thing that was badly communicated were some aspects of the exam inspection. There were only a few time slots, and the students were asked to finish the exam inspection within 30 minutes. However some students understood it as being supposed to finish by the end of their respective time slot, leading to a lot of pressure for them. We consider that only being a miscommunication.
What we actually consider valid criticism is the fact that issues raised during exam inspection were not taken into consideration right away, but later on when the lecture staff could consider them peacefully at home. That in itself is not a problem, but creates an inequality in opportunities, since there has to be a way for the students to react to the lecturer's feedback, and give, in turn, counter-arguments. That was, according to the staff, possible via email; this possibility was, however, not announced.

We will write a follow-up to the professor and the TAs, as we have already started communication. We will also answer the students that came to us.

KiF

The KiF 51.5 will take place next month. We can send multiple elected people, and two of us are allowed to get a refund by the AStA. For that there are some formal requirements: Meet up with the Student-Council Department from AStA (David) AT LEAST two weeks before the event takes place. In this meeting you will discuss the baseline of the expenses, consisting of train ticket, the KiF participation fee, and ~10€ a day for food etc. Lodging cannot be refunded, as the KiF offers free sleeping locations.
Mona will write a short information message for people who want to participate.

MfCS1

MfCS 1 is planned to take in an online-only fashion. We think that this will greatly harm the quality of the lecture as online-courses have more difficulties with communication and interaction. Especially for the first-semester students this is going to be more difficult as they do not yet have any experience with lectures and studying at all.
We will write an email to the Deans whether they know the reason behind this. Furthermore this is a legal issue as there exists a university regulation that makes it mandatory for teaching personnel to actually teach in person. However, as the english course that is held by Dr. Mai in parallel will still be in person is basically equivalent (as you cannot take the english course after you failed the german course), it is not entire clear whether this is against university law.
Usually we would contact the lecturer, but as this potentially is a legal issue and an urgent manner, we want to quickly resolve this issue. This is especially important to us, as the people that start at university are not yet able to take initiative on their own.

Verfügungsraum

The Queer-Department is going to rent the Verfügungsraum on 19/01/2024. This is the university-wide STI-testing-day, where they collaborate with the Public Health Office and the Deutsche AIDS-Hilfe (German AIDS-Help)

Quiz Night

We will host a Quiz Night again next Saturday taking place at the Waldhaus. It would be great if one or two of our members would help Lukas out with the organisation.

Guidelines for Exam Inspections

We have received multiple questions about exam inspections in recent time. We do not know much about them except that there needs to be an exam inspection, however it is not at all clear how that is defined. We will write a letter to the legal department of SIC on what actually is allowed, e.g. whether it is okay to make a scan of your answers.
However we are not very hopeful to get very useful answers, as there exists "Freiheit der Lehre" (Liberty of Teaching).

Busy Beaver

We voted on a proposal for the winner of the Busy Beaver award. We will have an Email vote on whether the student council accepts that Proposal.
We will vote like the following for both votes (proposal and via Email): Everybody can vote as often as they want. However, for every candidate we will only count positive votes and ignore abstaining votes or votes against. In the end the candidate with the most votes will win, and the second and third place will become the candidates.

Digital Meetings

The university has changed their VPN-services. Unfortunately, this makes it technically not possible anymore to have our meetings on Discord. We will fallback to Jitsi as this was our second favourite tool until we have found a solution.

Metro Account

The student council has a Metro account from a long time ago, that gives us benefits when buying from things from there for Breakfasts etc. By now, this has been taking over by the FIS, who also have a Metro account, however that is leading to conflicts, and the easiest solution to resolve them is to close the Student Council account. We voted on that matter (7 in favour, 0 against, 0 abstaining).