LiLi, the Unabhängige Linke Liste (independent left electorial list at the university of Kassel), also criticizes the recent newsletter from the university, which refers to the universitary “prayer room” (actually the students’ rest room) as well as explicitly to religious university groups (ESG, KHG, MHG, SMD). It is not often that the university presidency sends an e-mail to all students. Precisely this happened now through the Vice President Mrs Clement on behalf of a so-called “Advisory Council of the Room of Silence”, of which we had not heard before, apparently to promote religion on campus, in an university room, which apparently was rededicated by the university’s presidency.
We are convinced and we never tire of emphasizing that the university as a place of enlightenment, criticism and social progress must necessarily be a secular place. Every person should be allowed to study, and of course all believers. However, religion is a private matter. The practice of religion on campus must not be actively supported by the university. We would wish that the AStA strongly speaks out to the presidency in support for a secular university. A self-administered students’ rest room would be urgently needed again in times of increasing fast pace in university culture. It is all the more a tragedy that this room is apparently converted without the inclusion of the students’ self-administration by the university’s presidency to a prayer room. This is unacceptable and has to be criticized.
The AStA as the representative body of the students’ self-administration is the institution at the university, which is democratically legitimized and should administer the students’ rest room, not some “advisory board” from outside the university, set in place by the presidency.
