The Principle of Solidarity

All students liable to contribution make their contribution to the general possibility of making use of the services offered by Studentenwerk Leipzig and the MDV semester ticket according to the principle of solidarity. The semester fee to Studentenwerk Leipzig and the contribution to the semester ticket must be paid per semester—irrespective of whether or not the student is present for the entire term (lecture period and semester break). There is no possibility of partial or monthly exemption, but only the possibility of getting exempted for the entire semester if you provide evidence that you are absent for the entire term.

The semester fee and the contribution to the semester ticket are comparably small, as the community of all students co-finances the provision of the offered services based on the principle of solidarity—irrespective of whether and to which extent the individual student actually makes use of the services. All members of the student community profit by that, in particular, however, those students who depend on claiming social benefits more than others. The solidarity of the entire student body with members of the community of solidarity who need social support is most important—not the perceived fairness of the distributed benefits in individual cases.

The exemption from contributions must be treated very strictly, because the more possibilities for claiming exemption from contributions are created, the higher becomes the contribution to be made by the other members of the community of solidarity for the provided range of benefits.

More exemptions from contributions would therefore lead to a rise of the contribution to be made per student and thus ultimately to the erosion of the community of solidarity.