Council meeting minutes from 2023-11-02

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

StuPa

Many students do not really know what the StuPa (students parliament) does. We think this is a pity as it is the most important organ of students self-government. For example they decide on how the money for the students councils are distributed. Usually the visible work is done by AStA, but in the background there is always the StuPa. It has shown that it is difficult to get students active in the StuPa. Furthermore the elections have low participation rates. We think that the elections are not well advertised so many people just miss the election date. The decisions are not visible to the students directly and not well communicated. For better communication we could set up a monitoring tool similar to"FragDenStaat".
Specifically for the CS-students there is another problem as the StuPa is held in German (due to the meetings usually are a lot more juristical and only few know the relevant Englisch terms). International students usually struggle voting because the advertising is in German too. To alleviate the problem of not being known to international students their website administrator could use a plugin that automatically translates it into different lectures.
We have a few ideas on how to improve the elections: The parties could start with advertising themselves earlier. Due to personal effort this is rather difficult, but it might be possible to hold a general election campaign e.g. a month before the elections actually begin. This could be done by making a small booth with two people at Mensa or even just distribute flyers.
We as the student council can do much, but it would be even better if all student councils are involved and bring in their ideas (e.g. by bringing this up in the next FSK).
The StuPa did not discuss this problem as a whole but some of the members have the idea of hosting a general assembly where people can ask questions.

Plagiarism

We as the student council offer counseling for plagiarism cases. Usually this was done by Nils, who by now is stepping back from student council duties, so we asked him on how we handle these cases.
Usually the bad news is brought up by the tutors and sometimes the professors themselves. Then you can defend yourself personally in front of them. If that is not sufficient you can write to the examination board. If they also deflect your case, the last option is to go to court of law.
The first and most important question should be, whether they actually plagiarised or not. After that we ask how they communicated with the professor or the tutor. Often the students are rather offensive by pointing out the study regulations. We recommend to always take the smallest steps, i.e. by talking to the tutor, writing an email asking for where the plagiarism has happened. It is important to be always nice when communicating. Then these cases can be resolved with the professors.
If not, the next step would be to go to the examination board. The students must know that this takes a long time (months) and is very stressful, no matter whether you win or lose. If it is not too important (e.g. only an exercise sheet), it might be an option to just let it rest and not fight it too much because of the beforementioned complications, get over it and avoid that professor in the future.
It gets more complicated it there are group or partner submissions, e.g. if your partner copied code but you did not. The easiest way is to get a written confession by your partner. For copied code there are ways to dissect the contribution proving you innocent.
Usually Programming 2 uses an automatic plagiarism checker, where they usually do not communicate the specifics and do not want to discuss it in to much detail. But they are also very lenient in punishing you. Of course you can start fighting it, but you should ask yourself if you really want to do that.
When you decide do to not fight the plagiarism accusation, it should be known that there can be consequences. The first plagiarism case usually is fine, but for the second plagiarism the examination board can decide to forcefully exmatriculate you meaning you are not eligible to study any other CS-related study programme all over Germany. Usually the Examination Board is really nice and discuss your case in a lot of detail. Also there are students members who will most likely to be on your side. The Examination Board will also send you a letter where they ask you to defend yourself. Often the students do not answer that letter, but we can help with formulation of that. We strongly advise to write a defense.
If you were unjustly accused, you will get the credit points for the lecture or passed your defense. For exercise sheets plagiarism that would admit you for the exam, you are eligible to receive a grade of 4.0 without writing the exam (as the case will most certainly be resolved after the exam date). However the students need to think about whether they want the stress that is involved with the process.

Theses

Bioinformatics, Mathematics and Visual Computing theses need to be submitted as a CD to the examination office. We think this is outdated, most of the new laptops do not even have a CD-drive anymore. The professors we talked to also agreed on that. We will write to the head of the examination office so they can centrally communicate our change proposal with all necessary examination boards who dictate this.

Student Working Rooms

The renovation of the student working rooms is now close to completed. The tables now have 4k-monitors with USB-C charging, which is very nice. However there are no network-cables anymore, which we already complained about. Furthermore students noticed that the power cables are not well distributed and some cable channels are required. Also they look rather empty because they reduced the amount of seating places by a third/half. However they plan to add round tables for group work.
We are very pleased that the department has incorporated our feedback. We will write another inquiry about the further plans for the rooms and especially how many seats are planned to be there in the end. Alex will write this inquiry.

Monitors

Before the student working rooms were renovated, we salvaged the old monitors from them. By now they belong to us. We do not have to much use for them and would like to make them available to the students. After every student had their chance we will sell them online.

Deans Lunch

We plan to hold a lunch with the deans where we discuss some current topics and general things every semester. Currently we are scheduling and will give an update in the upcoming weeks.

TaCoS

The SpraWiTech students council is hosting a conference called TaCoS with all other SpraWiTech students council all over Germany. It is somewhat similar to the KiF. They asked us for help with conducting the conference. We probably do not have the manpower to help them organising or conducting, but we would be willing to give them equipment. We will invite one of their council member to our next meeting to instruct us with more details about their planning and what help they would like to get.

Pupils Information Day

The Pupils Information Day will take place on November 15th. The pupils that will take their Abitur (A-level exams) this year will visit university and inform themselves about what study programmes are offered. The Study Coordination asked us for help that day. Our job would be to answer questions and maybe advertise the CS-department a little. We would like to help the study coordination, but as we are also busy with semester work, we asked what our benefits would be. We were assured that we could get some compensation of expenses. Anton V. will set up a doodle.

Introduction to MAD

Last week we noticed that the course Introduction to MAD is offered at another time than the study plan suggests. In the end there was a miscommunication between HBK and university. The recommended study plan will be updated. Additionally the registration deadline will be pushed back or Mediainformatics students can register and then the registrations will be send as a bundle.