Intentions, Remote Locations, and Final Papers
Last Thursday, the new student parliament convened for its first ordinary meeting. Just a week earlier, a power cut had prevented the meeting from taking place. Accordingly, there were many motions on the agenda.
Achieving something!?
At the beginning of the term of office, a number of people have already registered who would like to get involved in the numerous student council working groups. The working groups for ecology, music, culture, art, and gender equality are now welcoming new members.
There were two appointments each to the Sustainability Steering Group and its Democratization Working Group. The latter was set up in response to the controversy surrounding the sustainability strategy last semester. The majority of the student parliament had voted in favor of adding a section that aims at introducing a constituted student body in Bamberg. However, this passage was not included in the final version of the strategy.
The new working group will now provide space for discussions on the topic of student co-determination. Elias Leikeb (student senator of the Bamberg Green-Left Student Initiative, BAGLS) and Florian Knoch (WIAI student council) were unanimously delegated.
The Speakers’ Council also proposed a supplementary budget for the current financial year. This should serve to adapt the original budget to new developments or priorities, for example to be able to meet the acquisition requests of working groups by redistributing the funds. After some discussion, the proposal was ultimately approved.
Objectives for 2025
In order to formulate a concrete perspective for the legislative period, various student representatives met for several workshops. One result of this “StuVe retreat” is a list of goals to be adopted by the Student Parliament. Among other things, the parliament has set itself the goal of promoting democratic awareness among students in the upcoming federal elections.
The best way to achieve further goals is still being debated. The decision on specific projects to make committee work more visible and various other goals was initially postponed until the next meeting. The various discussion points could not be resolved at this meeting in the absence of the applicant.
Remote Gutenbergstraße
The WIAI Student Council submitted three motions addressing the situation at the Gutenbergstraße (GU13) site. In the view of the applicants, the remote building lacks catering facilities and places to stay. They therefore suggest at least installing vending machines with hearty food and (hot) drinks in the short term. At the same time, a concept for affordable catering for students and employees should be developed.
Publicly accessible workstations and room allocation plans should bring further improvements. Finally, the Student Parliament believes that public transport lines are necessary. Up to now, it has been difficult to get from Erba to Gutenbergstraße in time, even if you have your own bike. An extended bus route between Erba, Feki, Gutenbergstraße and the train station should be envisaged.
Transparency note: The author was co-author of these proposals.
Final theses and workrooms
At the request of the SOWI Student Council, parliament is now demanding that final theses should also be able to be printed in the in-house print shop. Currently, students have to use external companies for this. The student representatives have also long been calling for the distribution of physical copies to be stopped completely – so far without any significant progress.
An application was submitted from the city center concerning Branch Library 4. Due to an exhibition, access to the 24/7 workstation was blocked for several weeks. Parliament supports the Huwi Student Council’s request to avoid such blockades in future.
Transparency note: The passage on the supplementary budget was written by our editor Louisa Issing, as the author was involved in the discussion on the topic.
