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Do the student bodies in Germany have a general political mandate?

I was surprised that this question still has to be asked - and answered negatively - more than 50 years after the student movement.

I thought the 68ers had won this right for the General Student Committees (AStA).

But no.

The Frankfurt Administrative Court, citing the Hessian Higher Education Act, has just ordered the AStA of the Goethe University to refrain from "making general political statements, in particular statements that can be understood as a call to violence against people or property".

In doing so, she has largely agreed with the University President Birgitta Wolff - who has since been voted out and generally acting rather unsuccessfully - in her dispute with the AStA.

The verdict is strange.

Anyway, it should be clear that calls for violence are prohibited.

Almost every outrage-borne utterance - and fortunately, young people are easily revolted against what they perceive to be injustice - can, however, be "understood" by malevolent people as a call to violence.

Such a rubber formulation opens the door to arbitrariness.

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I do not agree with many of the incriminated statements made by the AStA, which is mainly formed by left-wing students.

but that is not the point.

For every political party, university policy is part of their general policy, which conversely means that the elected representatives of the student body must be able to express their views on general policy.

The administrative court indirectly recognized this in its judgment.

Because President Wolf's attempt to forbid the AStA from making a statement against the anti-Israel BDS movement was declared unlawful by the court.

Because the AStA has combined its call against the Israel boycotters, who are currently active in academic circles, with demands from university policy: Strengthening joint research and student and academic exchange between Germany and Israel;

Establishment of another chair for research on anti-Semitism;

Protecting Jewish life and Jewish students on campus.

It's ridiculous that such a resolution should be banned by German students at all.

The new President Enrico Schleiff should apologize to the AStA.

And the students know how to formulate their political resolutions in the future: always with a university connection, please.

Shouldn't be too difficult.