At the Austrian Student Union, President Sarah Rossmann and her board spearhead initiatives in student housing, financial aid, international student integration, and environmental sustainability – all while managing the demands of their volunteer positions.
Text and photography by Alexei Korolyov
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At the headquarters of the Austrian Student Union (ÖH) in the Taubstummengasse in Vienna’s fourth district, the atmosphere resembles an off-season university campus. It’s high summer, and the corridors are empty, with the ÖH election campaign posters – some dating back several years – fluttering in the breeze from the open windows.
However, this impression belies the outsize role the ÖH plays in Austrian student life. There are up to 400,000 higher education students in the country, all of whom are compulsory fee-paying members of the ÖH. For the 2024-2025 academic year, the ÖH fee is set at €24.70 per semester. According to the union’s current budget projection – which also includes government grants and donations – this results in a substantial €18.5 million in takings, placing the ÖH in the same big-money league as some of Austria’s other major non-profits, such as the ÖAMTC, the car roadside assistance and air rescue service. But where does this money go?
“Most of that money doesn’t stay with us,” says ÖH President Sarah Rossmann. “We have to give money to the local student unions, and the rest goes to our programs and our projects.”
“It’s really time-consuming; you can’t really do your studies next to it.”
Rossmann is well-acquainted with this system. Now an undergraduate at the University of Vienna, studying German and English with the aim of becoming a teacher, she was president of the student union in her native Graz, Austria’s second-largest city, before climbing the political ladder to the ÖH in 2023. In the ÖH’s biennial elections in the spring of that year, Rossmann – who belongs to GRAS (The Green & Alternative Students), a student party loosely affiliated with the Austrian Green Party – ran in tandem with Nina Mathies, top candidate of the Socialist Students’ Association (VSStÖ), linked to the Social Democratic Party (SPÖ). Mathies then took the top job, with Rossmann becoming first deputy president before the pair swapped roles this month, something that has been standard practice at the ÖH for years. A third member of the three-pronged board is Simon Neuhold from the Communist Student Association – Left List (KSV-LiLi). Despite the switch, all three members of the board do everything together; even their salaries are the same, currently at €850 a month after tax (up from €750 last year).
The board members are officially “volunteers” rather than employees (there are 27 employees at the ÖH, in accounting and office roles) and have irregular working hours. It’s not unusual for them to work 50 hours a week, Rossmann says – a significant commitment for a student like herself: “It’s really time-consuming; you can’t really do your studies next to it.” Last semester, Rossmann accumulated only eight ECTS points (the average point count per semester at the University of Vienna is 16), but she puts a brave face on it: “If you’re in a position where you can afford to lose two or three semesters, it’s cool to do it.” The workload also means that some areas inevitably lag, such as the ÖH website, which doesn’t have nearly as much information and updates in English as it does in German. The ÖH’s department for international students has increased by one person since last year, bringing the total to eight people, with an annual budget of €40,200 for salaries and costs.
From the start, the main focus of the Mathies-Rossmann presidency has been on financial assistance for students in need and on student housing across both subsidized student homes (the ÖH runs its own line of homes, home4students, in addition to other student housing providers) and private accommodation. The cost-of-living crisis, the war in Ukraine, and Austria’s record-breaking inflation in recent years have all pushed prices up, hitting students particularly hard, Rossmann says. Private landlords have been especially greedy: there are known instances of students – particularly international students who may have little knowledge of Austria’s housing market – paying €800 in monthly rent for a 10-square-metre room. “That’s why we have had a major campaign on this and toured all of Austria, talking to students about their struggles and what we can do for them,” Rossmann says. The ÖH is now pushing the government to reinstate student housing funding, which was halted in 2009. The funding would relieve the financial pressure on organizations that run student accommodation – all of them NGOs, like the ÖH itself – and help bring rents down.
Although sometimes dismissed as “political kindergarten,” the union has served as a springboard for many political careers.
The ÖH is also in talks with the government about creating a special student-at-risk program for student refugees – but so far, to no avail. This kind of work – which also includes meetings with ministers and participation in higher education conferences such as the Hochschulkonferenz, which takes place twice a semester – is largely invisible to the outside world, but there are other, more visible aspects to the ÖH.
Although sometimes dismissed, including by ÖH activists themselves, as “political kindergarten,” the union has served as a springboard for many illustrious political careers, including those of Austria’s former federal president, Heinz Fischer, and Vienna’s former mayor, Michael Häupl, who served as chairman of the Socialist Students’ Association. Sigrid Maurer, the chairwoman of the Green Party’s parliamentary club, was once ÖH president. It’s no wonder, then, that the union’s election campaigning always garners generous media attention in Austria. However, there’s one major downside: most of it is in German, which automatically excludes international students, who number almost 100,000 and may not necessarily speak or understand the language. Rossmann acknowledges this: “We actually talked about it a few days ago in our working group on the elections, that that’s a big struggle and we need to have a bigger focus on international students in the next elections.”
Another flagship ÖH initiative concerns the environment, with projects including regular explanatory lectures from top scientists, as well as efforts to persuade Austrian universities to go climate-neutral by 2030, ten years earlier than Austria’s overall national target. Despite its environmental focus, the ÖH still produces a lot of printed material – posters, info flyers as well as a free magazine called Progress which costs €115,000 a year to make – but Rossmann argues that printing and online distribution have similar climate impacts: “The internet also produces a lot of CO2 and we are still printing because we think it’s easier for students to get in touch with us if we have print media.” In this, as in the ÖH’s other activities, the key is the pressure it puts on others, Rossmann says: “Before we become climate neutral, which is obviously our goal, we still want to motivate others, especially big institutions and stakeholders, to do so,” she insists. “Not printing flyers anymore won’t stop the climate crisis.”
Putting global issues aside, Rossmann says that once her term in office ends next summer, she plans to focus on being a proper student again and finish her bachelor’s degree – and possibly step away from student politics altogether. “I started because I saw that there was a lot to do and that students face a lot of struggles during their studies, and so I got into student politics and got stuck here, but I don’t think I will stick to party politics as it’s not my cup of tea. Maybe I’ll work in more autonomous collectives and do more activism because I come from an activist scene and want to return to that a bit.”
