On May 13, many student council initiatives received an invitation to support the organization of the summer festival by agreeing to collect the bottle deposit on the afternoon of the summer festival. The money collected (the amount was estimated at 2-500 euros in the email) was to be kept by the first student council that volunteered to collect the deposits.
First of all, we would like to emphasize that we do not condemn any student council initiative for accepting this offer and participating in the implementation of the summer festival in this way.
Self-organization by students at the university is often challenging and costly, and even if there are broad and simple financing options from the AStA, not all students are able to advance the money, which is why it is often important to have a student council fund that is as full as possible.
Nevertheless, we would like to point out to what extent this offer from the university is not only inappropriate, but also reveals a questionable understanding of the role of the student council initiatives in the university and attempts to exploit the financial needs of the student council initiatives.
First of all, a few words about the "compensation" offered. It seems extremely unlikely to us that an event such as the FU summer festival would incur a bottle deposit of 2-500 euros. In recent years, it has been forbidden to bring glass bottles and drinks have generally been served in cups that require a deposit. Based on estimates from people who have been to the summer festival in recent years, we would conclude that even a deposit of 100 euros would be optimistic.
Furthermore, we would like to emphasize that the permission to keep the deposit collected is not a form of compensation!
It is neither an hourly wage nor a fee for the work done, but an insult to all students involved in university politics. It is expected that no further effort or concession on the part of the university will be made to clear up the bottles for the summer festival.
We must also emphasize that if the university did not collect the bottles itself, it would go to other people. It makes no difference to us whether these people are students or non-students.
Of course, we welcome the university's desire to involve the student council initiatives more in university events, but in our opinion this attempt looks more like the university wants to save on cleaning costs and take advantage of the students of the student council initiatives.
Neither of these two options represents the kind of exchange at eye level that we as the student representatives would like to see between the university and the student councils. Rather, it fits in perfectly with the condescending treatment by the university management that we as an organized student body have unfortunately been accustomed to for years.
With this in mind, we would like to expressly point out to the university that the student body is an important and essential part of the university and should be treated with respect and dignity, both as a whole and by the student council initiatives that organize and represent it.
Furthermore, university operations would simply not be possible without the voluntary, independent and unpaid commitment of the student council initiatives in large parts, which is why we are all the more speechless that the university is displaying such behavior.
We call on the university management and in particular those responsible to apologize in an appropriate manner to the student council initiatives that have received this offer.
Furthermore, we point out to the university that if the cooperation of student council initiatives in university events is desired, this requires a respectful interaction at eye level, which includes the involvement of the student councils on a content level and independent offers.
Supporting student councils:
FSI PuK
FSI Sonderpädagogik
FSI Lehramt
FSI*OSI
FSI Geschichte
FSI Info
FSI Geologische Wissenschaften
FSI Physik
FSI Pharmazie
FSI Bioinformatik