Yesterday, once again the New Year-Apero took place. In the meantime it has become a fixed institution during the course of a year and is very popular amongst staff and students at ETH. We welcome and appreciate this. Events like this are important for the social life at ETH and strengthen the identification with our university.

At least for those at ETH, who understood the invitation and the delivered speeches, because they were able to understand and read German. Our university boasts with its internationality. However, now and then it is forgotten that an increasing internationality also means that we have to care about how to address everybody at ETH, also those who do not know the German language.

Therefore we have a wish, though we thought that these things have already become self-evident: We would like to have all invitations for events at ETH both in German and English and at least some of the speeches held at official events in English. By that also all foreign staff members and students can talk in such a positive way of ETH events as the German speaking participants do of yesterday's New Year-Apero.

And for we are just in the course of making wishes: In his speech Mr. Hafen mentioned that he would like to visit some institutes on Saturday. He expects to meet a lot of doctorate students then because working in Saturdays is an "essential part" of being a doctorate students. Our wish is now that all who heard this take it as a little joke and not as a request to let doctorate students show up in the office or the laboratory regularly on Saturdays. We are sure that it was meant to be nothing more than a little joke. Wasn't it?

The AVETH presidents: Paolo Losio and Nadine Schuessler