Amendment: Restructure Student Council to 7 Functional Portfolio Seats

[maxonary]

Proposed Amendment: Student Council Portfolio Restructure

Summary

This amendment restructures the Student Council and committee-based composition to 7 functional portfolios that better reflect the actual work being done.

Key Changes

Council Structure (§3)

• Before: 3 Senate members + 5 committee members + 3 Study Programme Council + 2 gendered seats + chairperson
• After: 7 functional portfolios (President, Alumni Relations, Admissions & Study Experience, Community Builder, Marketing, Entrepreneurship, Partnerships, including the (currently 4) Academic Senate members)

🗳️ Election Process (§4)

• Removes gender-specific requirements
• Adds diversity and equal opportunity provisions
• Maintains all existing voting mechanics and quorums
• Removes the General Assemblies of the Study Programmes

📋 New Responsibilities (§18a)

• President: Spokesperson, chairs Council, external representation
• Alumni Relations: Maintains alumni network, bridges students and alumni
• Admissions & Study Experience: Student perspective on admissions, learning quality feedback
• Community Builder: Events, hackathons, socials, club support
• Marketing: Student-led communications, campaign coordination
• Entrepreneurship: Interface for entrepreneurship activities
• Partnerships: External request intake, MoU escalation

Why This Change?

1. Clearer Accountability: Functional portfolios align with actual work being done
2. Scalability: Structure supports future Masters programmes without complex seat calculations
3. Efficiency: Removes artificial gender quotas while maintaining diversity through outreach
4. Continuity: Committee and Senate representation continues with clearer coordination

What Stays the Same

• All election mechanics, quorums, and meeting rules
• Physical presence requirements
• Council operations and decision-making processes
• October 1–31 election window

Study Programme Updates

Updated to reflect current programmes: Business Management & Entrepreneurship, Digital Design & Innovation, Software Engineering, Technology & Management.

Governance Safeguard

Added clause requiring external confirmation for governance-affecting amendments where required by university constitutional documents.

Transitional Provision

Current office holders remain until new elections; committee and Senate representatives continue per original terms.

[wherop]

I find the description of new process for allocating Representative positions in the Academic Senate and especially the Study Program Councils unclear. This also makes even discussing the new process more difficult.

Representative seats to the Study Program Councils, should be independent of the seven "portfolio role" positions.

The way I understand, now each of the Study Program Council Representatives would need to be one of the seven SC members. This makes it complicated and potentially impossible, to find a Rep. for each study program. Or it might require extra rounds of elections to make up for the mismatch. It also excludes people who don't want to take on one of the "portfolio roles", but are willing to represent their study program in the council.

If SP Council Reps. do not get invited to the SP Council meetings, that is a communication issue between the SC and CODE Faculty, but it doesn't make these roles redundant in their purpose.

[maxonary]

Good catch. I see where the confusion comes from, and you’re right that clarity is crucial here.

👉 The intention of the change is not to make Study Program Council (SPC) seats dependent on the 7 portfolio roles. The idea is to ease elections by running them together:
Students apply once (for a portfolio role or as SPC/AS representative).

Study Program Council (SPC) and Academic Senate (AS) seats are still elected independently by study program, as required by the university regulations.
-> Portfolio roles and SPC/AS seats can overlap in one person, but they don’t have to.

So:

• If someone wants to run only as a Study Program Council Rep and not for a portfolio, they can still do that.
• If a Student Council member also wins their program’s SPC seat, they wear “two hats.”
• If no Council member represents a program, that’s fine too -> the SPC seat can still be filled separately.

[wherop]

Concerned about reduction in gender representation guardrails.

(4) Elections follow majority voting as in § 4(6)–(8). All roles are open to all students, irrespective of gender and age. Diversity and equal opportunity are to be fostered in candidate outreach and nomination.

With the end of dedicated female & male representatives, this new clause is way too vague and unspecific to ensure, fair representation across genders. With an imbalanced student body such as ours, we shoulb be wary of this.

[Juliangebhard]

Election results for the statute 01.10.2025