Council meeting minutes from 2025-02-05

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

BlueSky Account

*Minute Takers Note: The Terms "Twitter" and "X" are used interchangeably*

Manuel does not know what this topic is about, but we assume it is a continuation of last weeks topic on whether we want to create a BlueSky Account, following the questionable decisions made by the X (Formerly known as Twitter) platform.

Manuel mentions that we haven' t used our Twitter Account that much anyway, but in the end it is up to the Social Media team whether they can support posting in our various communication channels.

Kamila supprts having a BlueSky Account. However she also supports the metnon that it could become difficult to maintain all the communication channels. She suggests to maybe setup a bridge to make it easier. Manuel adds that due to the different ways how diverent outlets work (Hashtags, Labels, Mentions) it can be difficult to bring everything "under one hood".
Generally Manuel also mentions that this may be more appropriate to be decided by the upcoming council.

Lizzie agrees that having a BlueSky Account would be good, but also notes that our Twiotter account is somewhat dead at the moment. She also mentions that we could consider only having one account (Either X or BlueSky) as maintenance would be easier.

Harry adds that in general having accounts on different platforms is better, as we can reach a larger target audience. Yagmur supports to be active on both platforms, as currently people may still be transitioning from Twitter to BlueSky.

Generally the current main discussion is whether we want to have an (additional) BlueSky Account. In the future it might be considered to abandon Twitter. But in the end it is also kind of subject to the people in the social media task force, whether they can handle an additional account.

Abigail and Harry reiterate that it is beneficial to diversify our presence across multiple platforms.
Manuel is somewhat opposed and brings up, what about [Any other platform we currently do not have]?

He would like to defer this decision to the future council. No one objects.

Fan

Manuel found a Fan in the trash deposit in the basement of E1.1. He wanted to ask whether we want to keep it. During the demonstration process it broke apart, but it still works.

He asks whether the council would like to keep it. Manuel says it will be useful in summer. Lukas objects, but he also is not too much in the council room during summer as he has an office. Lukas mentions that it will take up place. Harry suggests for now we can store it in the Verfuegungsraum for now. Lukas reminds people that this is how random stuff accumulates.

We had a vote to keep it. Only Lukas is against it.
We are keeping it and leaving burden of storage to the upcoming council.

Pins

Manuel dug through the trash. He found some random pins that say "Informatik saarland". He proposes to just put them out into the hallway for people to take. If they are well received, we can have a talk to the faculty to maybe re-produce these for events or as merch.

Abigail adds that we could also hand some of them out during e.g. breakfasts or StEP.
There were no objections.

Aquarium

There is a glass room next to the iCoffee in E1.3 commonly referred to as the "Aquarium". It is currently a room dedicated to the Visual Computing Course of study.

During COVID it was rarely used. While it is now used at some points it is still used rather rarely. This seems inconvenient, given we already have a shortage and rooms and this specific room only benefits a very small subset of students.

Officially, this room "belongs" to the Visual Computing room, but Alex suggests that we might want to consider talking to whoever is responsible for the room to open it up. Alex did some thinking who might be responsible for this room. He came to the conclusion that Erich is responsible for that room.
In a past vote we decided to contact the examination board of VC about the room, but this does not seem relevant any more as we don't think they are responsible for the room.

Alex suggests to have a vote to write Erich and thus overruling the previous vote to contact the Examination Board.
We had a vote:
- Unanimously in favour.

Alex will write the mail and setup the meeting. Jan-Philipp will join the meeting.

FSR Group Purge

A few months back we discussed removing old members/unknown people from our igger telegram group. Following that, Nic created a list with who would stay and who might be kicked out and sent it into the group. People who wanted to stay had ample time to react to this group.

Nic suggests to now go through with the purge and remove people currently on the yellow or red list.

Nobody objects.

Room 104 Renovations

The SIC wants to renovate room 104 (Former CIP pool). Currently Natalia mentions that the room isn't used as much. There used to be an issue with the access control to that room, which was recently fixed.

Natalia asked for our opinion on moving the tables from the hallway into room 104 to reduce the noise in the building. Alex mentions that this topic might be better suited to be deferred to the working room task force we already have since they have already put a lot of work into that.

People comment that not all people using the tables in the hallways are using it for work but also to hang out. Daniel adds that many people might not be aware that the rooms exist. It might be beneficial to make these rooms more know.

Kevin provides insights on the current working drafts the task force had for this room. One idea was to convert it into online meeting workspaces where people can join online meetings or lectures.

There were various discussions how to proceed. Suggestions included discussion the Online Meeting Workspaces room with the faculty and also brainstorm other ideas.
Kevin has already tested out some options on how an online meeting setup could be arranged that worked somewhat well.

We suggest that this discussion should include the new members of the new rooms task force. Manuel will talk to Natalia that we will setup a meeting, but it might take some time until it is decided who will be in the task force.

Dishwasher Update

Since last week Daniel has called MediaMarkt but there also were no viable options. Alex is unsure how to proceed. Manuel talked to Saturn and they did offer some options that were similar but not the same.
Alex also looked into the leasing option from Elektro Meyer, but if you sum up all costs its much more expensive.

Lukas mentions that the original model is back to the original price and there is asimilar model to the same price.

Manuel suggests that Alex and Lukas make a decision after this meeting and order it.
No one objects.

Study Platform

Last week the Study Platform suggestion was discussed. Since then Manuel had a in-depth meeting with the person that suggested this topic.

The result of this discussion was that all of the benefits such a platform could offer are more or less already covered by our faculties services (CMS, Discourse, Thought Protocols). Therefore Manuel declined our cooperation. The person was very understanding.

Kamila asked whether there is a visibility issue with our current platforms since the person was not aware of it. Manuel clarifies that the person suggesting it was not a computer science student and thus wasn't familiar with our platforms.

SIC Sticker Update

A while ago there was a discussion concerning non-students being at university and disrupting learning and vandalism, especially in evenings and on weekends. The suggestion back then was to create and hand out special stickers to students to put on the student IDs that verify that you are a CS students. While students from other faculties at our university might not be a big contributor to these issues, this approach seems the most feasible.
It is important that this will only affect being at university outside the regular opening hours.

On the 2nd of July Alex offered to design and order the sticker. Currently the stickers do not exist.

Alex explains that unfortunately he did not have enough time to finish the project. He is open to support another person to finish it. The necessary steps are:
1. Pick a product (Alex has candidates)
2. Design the Stickers (Alex has a few designs)
3. Just order (Talk to Natalia)

So as one can see it is nearly done.

Kamila asks whether the working door rooms are not unlocked anymore by the student IDs. Manuel explains that it was too high maintenance for the faculty to manage the access to the room.

Abigail will help Alex finishing the project. The deadline is February 15th.
We will coordinate with the future students' council to handle the distribution.

Merch

Manuel updates us on the SIC merchandise topic. There was quite a well reception. We are now in a stage where we evaluate which prices people are willing to pay.

Water Cooker / Kettle / Wasserkocher

Our kettle is broken. There already was a lengthy internal discussion how to replace it.

There are temperature regulated kettles and ones that just heat up until water boils.

Daniel has prepared a presentation. Daniel explains that water can be hot and cold. He argues that Hot Water is not the same as Hot water. Essentially different kinds of tea are better with different brewing temperatures.

Daniel strongly advocates for a temperature regulated kettle.

Lukas remarks that the strong discussion already reached the FIS. They are fine to invest the money into a temperature controlled one. Alex remarks that we should not get a kettle made of water.

We voted on whether to propose a budget of 40 Euro and Daniel should select a model.
Vote was accepted.

Closing Remarks

Manuel mentions that this is likely the last meeting of the current council.
We are happy on our achievements and hope to continue the good work.

We wish the upcoming students' council the best of luck.

Manuel offers to have a presentation after the constituent meeting explaining the general operating mode of the council.