Dear Colleagues, I am choosing this medium since, as far as I know, no staff meeting is planned for the foreseeable future. A "Dear All" email strikes me as the most effective way of establishing a forum whereby everybody can be apprised of the problem and of the urgent need for a swift consensual solution. As if we didn't have enough problems what with our rapidly increasing intake etc., we now have a brand-new problem in connection with our exchange with the University of Hull. Now that Hull, like many other British universities, have decided in their infinite wisdom to go for "European"-style semesters rather than good old English terms - presumably in the interests of international compatibility - what is the result? Well, their first semester runs from something like early September to mid-January and their second semester from the end of Jan to the end of June. So far, so idiosyncratic. What this means for those of our students who wish to avail themselves of the exchange programme by going to Hull for Hull's second semester is, however, that they have to leave Aachen before the winter semester is over - thereby possibly missing the last two or three sessions of our classes. Our partners in Hull have written only this week to "remind" us that they cannot possibly accept any students who don't turn up at the beginning of term - or, to be more precise, in the week BEFORE the beginning of term for their (undeniably indispensable) induction sessions for new students. Since we, in OUR infinite wisdom, have only just decided (at our last staff meeting) to fix the maximum allowable number of absences from class at two per semester, any student wishing to go to Hull in Jan/Feb might just as well take the current Aachen semester off because they will not qualify for any Schein in any course. If I might make so bold as to propose a solution - it seems to me that the situation calls for a pragmatic approach: I think we should adhere to the spirit of our own decision rather than insisting on the letter. In other words, we should make an exception for students who find themselves in the dilemma I have described. In my view, we have an overriding interest as a Department, on the one hand in maintaining our exchange programme and on the other hand in obviating unnecessary hardship for individual students, who otherwise risk being crushed between the wheels of two incompatible and implacable systems. I personally would be prepared to dream up some alternative extra activity for any student concerned - to make up for their missing two or three sessions of my own classes. No problem - but of course it would be nice to know that I am not thereby going out on a limb (or ending in limbo). A footnote: Ironically, just as the TH has finally realised that having two semesters of unequal length is A BAD IDEA, what do Hull do? They re-structure their only recently introduced two-semester system so that one of them is four months and the other five months in length. EUROPEan?! Yours PHM