The purpose of our existence

Of course, a lot can be said about us now because we are members of the Speaker Council / Student Government (SSR), but yes, we find the existence of this body and that of the entire student representation meaningful and necessary. Isn't that enough?
But now, joking aside. Here are a few points about our work and why this meaning should be attributed to it:

First the most important point of all: we are your point of contact for any questions whatsoever! We listen to your problems and try to help you as best we can, whether through forwarding to another office, our knowledge or obtaining information that is important to you. Our already existing contacts with various bodies and individuals at the university are of great advantage for this. We have, amongst other things, a monthly meeting with representatives of the university management, in which we exchange information about current events, express our demands and wishes and discuss them. In addition to these regular meetings with the university management, we are also in contact with many other people and can thus draw on a broad network of knowledge and support. In the past, we have worked with deans, women's officers, representatives of the student services and many others. In addition to our contacts with other status groups, however, it is above all the offers and opportunities for input for you students that are our flagship. The student representation consists on the one hand of the student politics area and the political university groups and student councils located there, and on the other hand of the Departments of the SSR, in which you have the opportunity to get involved, meet other students with the same interests and develop yourselves. These include, amongst other things, the Culture Department with its lecture hall slam, the Sprachrohr (ask yourselves what you're reading right now), the Studi(o)bühne, which successfully performs many pieces in the Mensa at the Studentenhaus every year, or the Department of Ecology and Sustainability with the CampusGarten, in which you can all make your little dream of being a gardener come true.

However, networking work and listening to student problems are not only important to us – in addition to these everyday tasks, we plan and organise smaller and larger events, some intended for celebration, some for further education.

We are currently planning, amongst other things, an anti-racism campaign. Since many people, including at universities, are affected by discrimination on a daily basis, we want to use this campaign to draw attention to everyday racism and carry out awareness-raising work. Furthermore, a direct reference to our university everyday life should be established and the importance of university diversity should be emphasised. Our goal is that through engagement with the existing heterogeneity, a strengthened sense of cohesion will be experienced and we, as a university community, will speak out together against racist actions.

Another substantive focus is engagement with the topic of sustainability. There have been efforts in the student representation for a very long time to anchor this topic more deeply in the structures of the university. There has been a long fight for a sustainability office and numerous discussions have been held. Unfortunately, our demands have not been met so far. Instead, only a quarter(!) position for sustainability was incorporated into the central administration and a sustainability report was created, which was supposed to be published in December 2019 and is still awaiting publication. The student convention, on the other hand, passed a resolution in December 2019 after intensive substantive discussion on the "declaration of a climate emergency at Universität Würzburg", in which explicit demands and courses of action are named in order to "[the recognition of] combating the climate crisis and its serious consequences as a task of the highest priority [to be met]". The entire resolution can be read here: https://www.uni-wuerzburg.de/fileadmin/34000000/Konvent/2019-20/2019-12-17/Beschluesse/klimanotstand.pdf

So there is still much to be done in that direction and we will certainly have some more discussions with the university management and university bodies ahead of us. Of course, it is sometimes difficult to achieve something when the university management is of a different opinion. Nevertheless, we can be sure that our opinions are heard and always have an effect, even if the path is slow and rocky.But as described above, there are also many tasks that we tackle successfully and gladly on a daily basis and through which life for students becomes safer, more relaxed or better in other respects – because that is what forms the foundation for the existence of the student representation.