By Boris Dombrowski
White applicants not welcome…remember? With this specification, the student union RefRat (legally: AStA) at the Humboldt University (HU) was looking for an anti-discrimination consultant almost exactly a year ago. And thus for a lot of criticism – e.g. from politics – taken care of.
In the end, the authors gave in to public pressure and changed the tender.
But the HU-RefRat is not out of the sights of politics, because: “After all, this year alone there are financial resources of 127,240 euros available in the budget for expense allowances for the speakers of the RefRat,” says CDU science expert Adrian Grasse (47). BZ
This is shown by the still unpublished response from the Senate (available from BZ) to a written request from the CDU MP. In the four years before that, it was a total of 465,460 euros. The monthly expense allowance is currently EUR 7,318.50.
In purely arithmetical terms, that’s a good 400 euros for each of the 18 current student speakers.
There are a total of 16 departments, which are occupied by up to two speakers elected by the student parliament – for example a department for anti-fascism, for queer_feminism, for international affairs, for political mandate and data protection or for publication.
But: “Essential study-specific departments such as studies and teaching, student council coordination and social affairs are vacant,” criticizes Grasse and emphasizes: “This at least raises the question of whether the right priorities are being set here.”
Grasse also has doubts as to whether the RefRat, with its speakers elected by the student parliament (StuPa), represents the interests of all 37,920 HU students. According to the response from the Senate, only 1172 valid votes were cast in the last StuPa election in July. “That’s a meager 3.1 percent,” says Grasse.
He warns: “Against this background alone, the representatives of the RefRat should have an interest in bringing more transparency into their work!”