Message to students
As the new semester begins, beautiful flowers and a warm spring breeze are filling our campus. Unfortunately, due to the COVID-19 outbreak, all the usual activities that liven up our campus have been postponed. Our major ceremonies and events, such as the inauguration, graduation, and entrance ceremonies were canceled. We are also currently discussing alternative plans for the commemoration ceremony scheduled in May.
I feel truly sorry for our freshmen students who must have had such great hopes for your new college life. Your first encounter with our University has been minimized, meeting professors only through online courses and missing the best opportunity to make new friends or experience new things through our University’s renowned RC education. I cannot find the right words to comfort you for your disappointment.
For the time being, however, we believe that the safety of all members of Yonsei University is the most important thing to protect. Thus, the official activities of the school will be conducted only through non-facing, online channels. All members of Yonsei should try our best to actively communicate in cyberspace and wisely overcome this challenge.
Yonsei University is putting the safety of Yonsei community members as our utmost priority in making all our decisions. We are searching for ways to make the most of our online lectures and to conduct experiments and hands-on training in a non-face-to-face manner so that classes can be smoothly conducted while preventing infectious spread of the virus. To this end, we are making various efforts, such as expanding servers, expanding wired and wireless communication networks, reinforcing firewalls, renting PCs, and hiring digital assistants.
To reduce the trial-and-error of large-scale, non-face-to-face and online lectures that have been conducted for the first time in history due to the COVID-19 outbreak, and to minimize the inefficiency of the administration, we have established a school board with student representatives in order actively to collect students' opinions through various communication channels such as an ‘online helper’ system.
Those Events that were inevitably canceled during the first semester will be resumed after the COVID-19 situation is settled. We urge you to keep social distance and refrain from using public facilities to stay healthy until this situation calms down.
May God's grace and loving care be with you and your family.
President of Yonsei University