lawsuit successful

A friend of mine, Andreas Weidner, filed against his removal from the register of students at the Technial University Ilmenau. He didn´t paid a very disputatious administration fee (50 EUR – Verwaltungskostenbeitrag) that was introduced with the new Thüringer Hochschulgesetz (thuringia law for universities – link only in german) – and got kicked out from the University.

Today his case was negotiated – and he won.

A little nightmare for the thuringia government, because the judge also predicted, that the fee may generally be illegal. So all 50.000 students in thuringia are free to decide if they want to pay the fee or not. And they can´t be kicked out for not paying it. A great day for students rights, after a long period of worsening.

Press links (all in german) :

press declaration TU Ilmenau

Spiegel Online

Newsticker

MDR

Focus

Update :

The TU Ilmenau decided to appeal against the judgement. They justify their decision with the unclear leagl status what to do with students not paying the fee. A great risk and a great chance for the students. If the appeal will be rejected then the fee will definitely be a part of history.

In the meantime a first dialogue with the secretary of culture delivered no improvement. He still thinks that 50 EUR are not a general tuition fee and that they do not stand in contrary to the promise, that there won´t a general tuition fee until 2009 which was given by the thuringia government.