Council meeting minutes from 2025-06-03

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

FIS general meeting

The FIS general meeting is on 12th of June at 6:00PM in room 407 as well as online.
Direct message from Max: We should go there and plan around two hours. Personal note: it's very important that many people attend and I'm going to be very vocal that people have to attend. The meetings may seem boring, however it's very important. If you want to see financial numbers, this is where you can see them.
The meeting will be held in German, but a best-effort live translation may be offered.

MfCS & FoCS clash - 7h exam marathon.

Turns out that MfCS2 and FoCS2 are having a back-to-back final exam on the same day with one hour apart (3h for MfCS2 from 9-12 and 13-15 for FoCS2). And, both courses are designed to be selected for 2nd-semester students. There will be many students taking both courses and impacted by the clash. We think that this puts too much strain on the students.
Mona says that it's quite late in the semester and that she's not sure if this can be changed. The offices responsible reportedly generally try to avoid such clashes.
Lukas thinks that it's impossible to change the exam dates now. He says that Study Coordination tries to avoid clashes and scheduling base course exams on the same day. Due to the weird classification of FoCS2, it's possible that this slid through the cracks.
Harry says that both exams are on the 31st of July - about two months into the semester. However, Ferdinand says that it's likely already too late. One possibility would be to increase the layover between exams by coordinating with the lecturers.
Anton says that the reexams are not on the same date.
Game plan: talk to study coordination and ask what to do about this. Harry volunteers to do this. He claims to not need any extra help.

Day of the Open Campus

Short recap of the good stuff:
- We are nice people, it's very enjoyable to talk to us (reportedly).
- We prepared a quiz that was very interesting eventually (also reportedly).
- We offered some ice tea or something, people were aching for that stuff.
- Daniel says that a lot more people came compared to last year.
- Cooperation with the study coordination: we could refer people directly to them and have them refer students to us if something was within our responsibility.
- Daniel really likes the setup. A lot of people also got our papercraft cow. Although, a lot of them were little kids. A lot of people from the other stands asked us about our tea.

Anton continues with the bad:
- The quiz was operational around 1PM, around the time when half of the event was already over.
- Our booth looked like it looked. The Math council made a meme out of it. Reportedly it looks very unapproachable (according to Anton; his opinion is highly disputed).
- Some shifts were missed. There was only one shift and Anton is dramatising. Shoutout to Daniel, who took more shifts than planned.
- Ferdinand says that it's not that bad as people seem to have approached us.
- Daniel says that it's unfortunate that we didn't have many fluent German speakers. By coincidence, very little fluent German speakers must have taken shifts.

Some can-not-change things in Anton's rendition:
- There are times when there's a rush of people and when there's nobody. If there's a rush, we can't accommodate everyone. If there's nobody, it's also bad.
- The fact that we didn't have fluent German speakers is not easily fixable.
- Often people don't know what the FSR is and thus don't know what to ask us - we don't really have a place and people don't have a reason to visit our booth.
-> Mona suggests that we could put out a banner that says what you could ask us or what we are.
- We got a lot of technical questions that we could not answer.
- Manuel says that we probably can't convey a super unbiased opinion. Anton says that we can't change this aspect.

There is a feedback form by the university. Anton looked up and it's not really like something opinionated. There's a bunch of simple questions in there. Seems like they just want more numbers and statistics.
JP noticed, according to Anton, that most activities happened on the campus lawn and you could easily spend the whole day there. The E1.3 buildings are often forgotten and looked over.
Ferdinand says that the event is nice nonetheless. Harry agrees.
Anton begs to differ. He thinks that we have a very high interest in not coming to the campus with false expectations and he thinks that they cause a lot of frustration.
Mona says that some of the people who come are past students. She also suggests that the council is not homogenous in its duties in that engaged members can pool time into whatever they want to.
Daniel says that a lot of the things that we do are spanned across multiple generations. A lot of what we do is intended across generations of people, not just current students.
Yagmur agrees. She says that talking to us might be a different and required experience for prospective students.
Daniel thinks that there is no room for improvement and we're doing amazing already. He likes the fact that we have something to hand out to people, like the cows. And the ice tea! Furthermore, he also likes the posters and their informational content.
Lukas says that, if it's possible, talk to Erich and ask if we have a slightly more open setup that math people won't make fun of.

StuBA: Volunteers wanted.

StuBA is looking for volunteers for an event that were meant to help out with.
For the uninformed, it's the student association for beer.
They were approached by AStA whom were approached by some brewery which is being open in Neunkirchen on the 21st of June. They asked AStA if they can find them some volunteers in exchange for some indeterminate donation to an indeterminate entity. Reportedly this will be beneficial to the StuBA and the council.
Long story short we are looking for people to volunteer. The donation could be anything between cash and kegs of beer. Lukas thinks that in the end, it will depend on how many people volunteer.
Lukas asks people to contact him directly regarding the StuBA volunteering. He also wants to make a post on discord about that.
Harry has finally asked what the volunteering entails. Lukas answers that they mostly need help with filling up glasses and dish washing. Ferdinand says that this is a great opportunity to learn how to pull beers. Lukas can not offer any compensation for volunteers other than personal gratitude and perhaps a warm handshake.
Anton asks if one can volunteer despite not being alcoholic. Lukas says yes.
Lukas says that there will be two shifts - 10:30AM till 5:00PM and the other one is from 5:00PM until the end, whenever it will be. Probably sometime around 10-11PM.
We don't know if there will be a break between the shifts.

The Great 10 Minute Topic: Messenger Service - Switch away from Telegram?

Telegram will include the X (formerly Twitter) chat bot Grok. Grok is developed by XAI, a subsidiary of X (formerly Twitter). Some chatter commences about Elon Musk's creative accounting. Essentially people are unhappy about Grok in Telegram. They're also unhappy about the advertisements being served in channels. Worse, the ads are reportedly very sketchy. Daniel asks what is Grok and why is it bad. Ferdinand answers that it's a LLM chatbot. Ferdinand also mentions that Telegram will likely share messages with Grok unless we opt out.
Anton doesn't want a big discussion about alternatives. He wants to compile a list of advantages and disadvantages and doesn't want to discuss the specifics right now. Ferdinand suggests that Discord has added a new coin (or something) and the executive board seems to be volatile. People are scared about advertising and micro-transactions in Discord. Until next time, Anton suggests that we think about in our own time and then host a cold vote on the next meeting. The first vote would be whether we want to switch or not, and the second vote is for whatever succeeds Telegram for our communications. Also, if we don't have an alternative to consider, the vote could be meaningless.