From: simon@fsinfo.cs.uni-sb.de (Julia Simon)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.german
Subject: Re: WHAT ARE GERMAN UNIVERSITIES LIKE?
Date: 12 Dec 1992 17:36:17 GMT
Organization: Fachschaft Computerlinguistik, U of Saarland, FRG
NNTP-Posting-Host: fsinfo.cs.uni-sb.de

pikoehn@cip.informatik.uni-erlangen.de (Philipp Koehn) writes:
> There is also no such thing like a campus. Ther
> university is spread all over the city; which is quite nice in small
> cities: Then, the city is the university, you can meet students
> everywhere, there are lots of pubs everywhere, where you can drink beer
> and relax.

That's not true for all German universities. Our university here at
Saarbruecken is a "Campus-Universitaet", that means, it's situated on a campus
a bit outside the town. That's quite good for students who are studying
several subjects - that's about everybody, since you need at least one
secondary subject for almost every primary one. The disadvantages are, of
course, the loooong time you need if you want to, let's say, go shopping
between lectures and the chaos in public transport in the afternoon, when the
lectures are over. But for me it's very nice (that is, if I don't want to go
shopping :) - I have a working area in the Comparative Linguistics institute
right in the middle of the campus and from there can reach all the places I'm
interested in within 5-10 minutes (walking slowly); that is, the Mensa, the
buildings my classes take place in, the central library, the institutes my
friends are studying at, and so on. There are also lots of cafes and small
restaurants on the campus - some of them are even managed by students!

> >> What are your student newspapers like?
> There are two different types of papers:
> (1) commercial publications with lots of advertisement and much 
>     "Blabla" concerning student`s topics.
> (2) publications from student activist with reports about new 
>     (bad) plans of goverment regulations regarding students, news
>     about the department, for instance:

	[stuff deleted]

> There are also of course a lot of leaflets concerning the latest 
> political event, such as foreigners-dislike, changing the asylum laws,
> 50th anniversary of the first nuclear fission.

There's another type: here in Saarbruecken we have a newspaper called MatIn
(it started as a publication by MAThematics and INformatics = computer science
students), which doesn't only contain information about the bad things the
government is doing to us and blah-blah type of information, but also useful
information about what's going on in Saarbruecken (I mean, cultural events),
satires about university life (by my humble self) and so on. But we're
fighting very hard for every article so that this newspaper be published at
least once a semester! I think it's growing thinner and thinner, and that's
very sad.

> >  What is done about sexual discrimination?
> Students invent new words. It is extremly to read in student publications
> words like "StudentInnen" (with capital "I" in the middle of the word)
> instead of "Studenten" (male students, or students in general) and 
> "Studentinnen" (female students). Also common is using "mensch" (= human 
> being) instead of "man" (= one, but sounds like "Mann" = male person).

But the word "Mensch" is derived from "Mann"! Maybe that's why I don't know
anybody who uses it instead of "man"...

("Mensch" originally meant "male" ("mann-ish").)

Feminists have created "frau" from "Frau" = woman; I often see the "unisex"
pronoun man/frau (or frau/man).

			Julia 8-)

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				Julia Simon

 Fachschaftsrat Computerlinguistik	DIaLOGIKa GmbH
 Fachbereich 8.7, Bau 17, Zi. 201
 Universita"t des Saarlandes		Albertstr., Pascalschacht
 D-W-6600 Saarbru"cken, Germany		D-W-6602 Dudweiler, Germany

			email: simon@fsinfo.cs.uni-sb.de
			       sileas@coli.uni-sb.de
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Newsgroups: soc.culture.german