Today, at the launch of the 9€ ticket, students in the Erlangen-Nuremberg university region are calling for a permanently cheaper semester ticket, because the local semester ticket is one of the most expensive in a nationwide comparison. The run on the 9€ ticket shows that many people want cheaper public transport. A recent study showing that 30% of students live on or below the poverty line illustrates how many students have to watch their wallets. Cheaper fares also have a significant steering effect on transport among this price-sensitive group.
After a good four weeks of collecting signatures, the two student representatives Paulus Guter (coordinator of AK Semesterticket) and Christian Peppel (chair of the Student Convention at FAU) handed over the collected signatures in support of the citizens’ petition regarding the 365€ ticket for students to the Mayor of Erlangen Florian Janik and other members of various factions of the city council.
f.l. Christian Peppel (Chairman of the FAU Student Council), Paulus Guter (Coordinator of the Stuve Semesterticket Working Group), Sebastian Hornschild (Klimaliste Erlangen), Mayor Florian Janik, Prof. Dr. Gunther Moll (Freie Wähler Erlangen), Andreas Richter (SPD Erlangen), Marc Urban (Grüne/Green List Erlangen)
In addition to the approx. 1,200 signatures submitted for the city of Erlangen, over 2,300 people in Nuremberg signed an equivalent application. Also, over 1,800 students residing outside Erlangen and Nuremberg have supported the application with their signatures (often second homes in Erlangen/Nuremberg). For the city of Nuremberg, the collection for the equivalent motion continues, as at least 4,000 valid signatures are required there. “More than 5,300 signatures for a cheaper semester ticket in the region is a strong sign,” says Büşra Başol, Vice Chair of the FAU Student Council.
“Especially after paid base tickets during Corona and after the 9€ ticket, the semester ticket must now become permanently cheaper. That is why the State of Bavaria and the municipalities should strengthen public transport. In the medium term, our wish is for a state-wide semester ticket, as is available in many federal states,” says Paulus Guter from AK Semesterticket.
Even though all students at FAU, THN, EvHN and HfM will be able to use their base ticket purchased with the solidarity contribution as a 9€ ticket in the next 3 months, affordable public transport will still be needed afterwards, especially for students. This can improve the value of the university location and make it more attractive.
This demand is underlined by the student representatives in the Erlangen-Nuremberg area with the citizens’ petition for a 365€ ticket for students. “We call on all parliamentary groups to vote in favour of these proposals because of social and transport policy reasons,” says Christian Peppel, Chair of the FAU Student Convention.
It’s been a long time, but now the format News from the Stuve is revived! We would like to give you regular updates on what topics we are currently dealing with and what is happening in the various committees of the Stuve.
For example, there is one topic that is on everyone’s mind this semester: the semester tickets! After the negotiations of the AK Semesterticket to keep the 2,07€-ticket for the rest of the lecture-free time, they already went back to regular business of fighting for the 365€-ticket. For a few weeks signatures were collected in Erlangen and Nuremberg in order to hand them over to the respective mayors of the two cities as a Bürger*innenantrag. In Erlangen this already happened on Tuesday – you can read more about it in the Stuve’s PK on the topic. During all these efforts, however, we already moved on to the next topic: the 9€ ticket. Here the working group has participated in many negotiations to make the refunds as fair and easy as possible for us students.
This semester, the Sprat has also exchanged ideas with the student council of the THN on this topic. In our meetings, we hope to be able to learn from each other’s work and even work together on problems. The Sprat has also met with the university leadership and discussed topics related to studying and volunteering at our university during a round of pizza in our new Präsi talks with President Hornegger. For example we talked about a topic on which we are currently in a lot of contact with the university: Valuing student engagement at our uni.
The next big event coming up is the university elections at the end of June. We organizing numerous meetings with the lists of candidates for the Student Counsil election and are also planning election videos and the university election compass. At the same time, many other events that had to be cancelled in the last semesters due to the pandemic situation are finally taking place again. We are happy that the Stuve can offer you many great opportunities to get back into student life again!
This is also where we hit our limits for a while, as our secretary Anja Winkelmann recently said goodbye to us and in the transition period until a new person is in the office, a few spratis are taking over her duties. There was some chaos to keep up with the many room requests for the events. However, we are doing our best and have been able to make just about everything happen so far in cooperation with the room management.
Our Stuve building has also come back to life this semester. Many groups meet there regularly, and one or the other special event is already planned. Just recently, for example, the revival of the AK Zivilklausel took place here. The topic of peaceful research instead of armaments research is being discussed. There will be more meetings about this, interested people can keep their eyes open on our channels for more information.
But also in general you are always welcome to get involved with us; the pandemic has caused big cuts in the student representation and we are always happy when new people want to get involved in the many committees. For example, feel free to drop by at various committee meetings or at working groups!
