Press release of the FAU student council “Studis stehen auf`s Impfen” (Students are into vaccination).
The student council of FAU Erlangen-Nuremberg clearly distances itself from the current campaign of the initiative “Studenten stehen auf” (students rise up) and supports the 2-G regulation for university classroom events introduced at FAU. The movement “Studenten stehen auf” mobilizes for Saturday, 20.11.2021, nationwide to Erlangen. The initiative is a group with close relations to the Querdenken movement and presumably has only a few members from the FAU. It can be assumed that a large part of the demonstrators will travel from all over Germany. Students at the FAU have recently been calling for much stricter rules and more controls.
The right to education will remain intact under the 2G regulations. Courses will be offered in online format in addition to face-to-face, and supplementary digital teaching materials designed in previous semesters will also continue to be available. For lab practicals or similar events that can only be conducted in face-to-face format, the 3G rule will continue to apply. “So the unvaccinated will not be excluded from education at FAU,” clarifies Luisa Weyers, co-chair of the student convention.
“The student council demands the safest possible teaching, which is more achievable under 2G conditions than under 3G conditions. The Corona antigen rapid tests do not have sufficient sensitivity and specificity to reliably exclude the presence of infected persons in courses and there are simply not enough capacities for the more accurate PCR tests,” explains Carlotta Ebert, representative of the Nachhaltigkeitsliste (Sustainability-list) in the student council. Discussions with experts within the university have also led to this conclusion.
“Given the tight situation in the hospitals, the only responsible alternative to the 2G rule would be a return to online-only teaching. That would be unfair to those students who have been vaccinated. The regulation maintains face-to-face teaching as much as possible,” emphasizes Lukas Bogner of the medical faculty’s student council. Other universities and higher education institutions, such as the Ingolstadt Technical University, have announced that they will be switching back to online teaching as of December 6. Already at the end of July, a voluntary and anonymous survey was conducted among FAU students on their vaccination status. In the process, 90% of the participants stated that they were fully vaccinated. The decision on the 2G regulation for everyday university life was made in the FAU crisis team, which also includes members of the student council and experts from the university hospital.
The student representation thus clearly positions itself on the side of medical research. The latter currently assumes that vaccinated persons pose a lower risk of infection and a significantly lower impact on clinics than unvaccinated persons.
At the booth, medical students from the Immunization Education Working Group and lecturers from the medical faculty will also provide information about the Corona vaccination and the current situation in the clinics.
Michael Ruppert, student senator, explains, “We counter the misrepresentations of the ‘Studenten stehen auf’ (Students Stand Up) initiative with facts and scientific evidence, because these should justify our decisions – especially at a university. There is a broad majority for this at FAU, and we feel this especially in our daily conversations with fellow students. Students like vaccination!”