By Gunnar Schupelius
The AStA of the Freie Universität leads a life of its own with a lot of money from compulsory fees, which the students are not interested in. It is high time to abolish this type of AStA, says Gunnar Schupelius.
The “General Student Committee” (AStA) of the FU is known for its left-wing extremism.
At the beginning of February, the student representatives stood out by advising women never to call the police, because they could at any time face racist or sexist assault by the officers. “Police violence and murders by police officers” are a well-known problem,” says an AStA statement from February 4th.
That was character assassination. FU President Günter Ziegler let it happen and took no consequences. The CDU MP Adrian Grasse took the AStA hatred as an opportunity to examine the work of the committee and asked the university senate about the funding.
It’s actually lavish: The AStA of the FU resides in a 16-room villa (235 square meters) in upscale Dahlem (Otto-von-Simson-Straße 23). The property is worth about 3.6 million euros.
The university spends 1,963.42 euros per month on maintenance and repairs (2021 value). The AStA doesn’t pay a cent in rent and also gets a lot of money: in the current budget year exactly 978,000 euros. The money is taken from the students’ semester fees.
MP Grasse wanted to know how the 978,000 euros will be spent. Answer from the science senate: “The AStA was not able to provide a precise breakdown within the set period.”
That is bold: the AStA collects compulsory fees and refuses to say where the funds are.
However, it is not only unclear where the money is going, but also whether the AStA is fulfilling its duty to represent the interests of all students. It doesn’t look like that. Even the lettering with the red star shows the partisanship.
And the current activity doesn’t seem very balanced either: the AStA is fighting against the lecturer Michael Grünstäudl, who is classified as “right-wing” and also for a “racism-critical and decolonial realignment at the Institute of Art History”.
In the past, the AStA openly campaigned against academic freedom. When the “Research Association SED State” published a study on left-wing extremism in Germany in 2015, the AStA representatives called for the research center to be closed because they did not like the results.
The working groups of the AStA are still very special today: The “Queer-Referat” helps “students who are on a spectrum of asexuality, aromanticism, biromanticism, bisexuality, homoromanticism, homosexuality, intersex, gender non-binarity, panromanticism, pansexuality, trans* gender or Queer*.
The anti-fascism department supports the defense against “mechanisms of oppression and domination” and wants to “anchor anti-racist politics in the university”.
The AStA leads a life of its own in its villa, the students are not interested. The voter turnout for the “Student Parliament”, from which the AStA emerges, was 2.34 (!) percent.
It is high time to abolish this type of AStA.
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