Over 400 students affected University of Bonn vacates third floor of main building
Bonn · Fire protection deficiencies force the University of Bonn to clear the third floor of the main building. Research and teaching will cease there on January 2.
This news should shake up the university's humanities department right at the beginning of the new year and for the rest of the current winter semester: For fire protection reasons, the third floor of the main building has to be cleared. For this reason, research and teaching will cease there on 2 January.
As the university announced on Friday, this measure was planned anyway - but only for the summer semester. Now, however, everything must obviously happen very quickly. This also means that many alternative quarters will not be available until the summer. A number of measures are planned to cover the space requirements.
One detail illustrates how much improvisation talent is currently in demand in the old Electoral Palace: Rector Michael Hoch also has to move in with the students and make his office in the main building available for teaching events.
The relocation was ordered by the Bau- und Liegenschaftsbetrieb (BLB) NRW as the building supervisory authority, which had come to a reassessment in regard to fire protection. Almost 100 rooms, 150 employees and more than 400 students of the arts faculties of the University of Bonn, who now have to be accommodated in alternative quarters, are affected by the closure.
Chancellor Holger Gottschalk informed the deans of the affected Catholic and Protestant Theological Faculties and the Faculty of Philosophy of the decision and discussed possible solutions for the resulting bottlenecks with them. Among other things, rooms in Römerstraße 164, which have been vacant since the recent move out of computer science, are to be renovated. In addition, the university administration is looking for further alternative quarters.
(Original text: Rüdiger Franz / Translation: Mareike Graepel)
