After the Diversity Council’s last regular meeting of 2024 was held at noon on December 9 in Conference Room 3 of the Faculty Club, the 8th Diversity Workshop followed at 2 P.M. in Kwanjeong Library’s Yangduseok Hall. The council holds the workshop every December for diversity representatives appointed by 46 SNU institutions and officials from cooperative institutions on campus, in order to introduce the council’s activities over the past year and share information about various institutions’ diversity promotion efforts.

In her welcoming speech, Diversity Council Chair Eungi Min said that the council is working step-by-step to build a community that respects and cares for diversity, citing its participation in the nationwide Korea Diversity Committee launched in June and hosting of two weeklong campus events this year. After introducing the workshop attendees beginning with those from SNU’s central administrative bodies followed by its colleges and affiliated organizations, she described the Diversity Council’s activities in 2024. Next, the teams selected as Outstanding Activity Teams from among the council’s student interns during the second semester of this year gave presentations. First, the “Black and White Graduate School Team” proposed creating a graduate student mentoring program based on the fact that graduate students had the weakest sense of belonging among campus groups in the “2021 SNU Diversity Climate Survey,” and presented the results of a campus tour pilot program. “Short’n Sweet (Gender Team)” which focused on international female students, introduced the contents of three rounds of discussions on the difficulties this group experiences in university life, particularly in the areas of health and safety.

Next, Vice Chair Seokhwa Yun summarized the diversity promotion efforts of 28 institutions and announced that two (the School of Business Administration and the Office of Student Affairs) had been selected as Outstanding Institutions. Following the awarding of prizes, the two institutions were invited to present on their efforts. Bokhyeon Baik, chair of the School of Business Administration’s Department of Business Administration, discussed how the school naturally takes an interest in diversity issues and operates diversity-friendly systems because it has many international students (both in degree programs and as exchange/visiting students) and students with double/minor/joint majors. Eunkyeong Yoo, associate deputy director of the Office of Student Affairs’ Student Support Center for the Disabled, briefly introduced the various responsibilities of the office as a whole. She then went into detail on the wide variety of efforts that the increasingly active Student Support Center for the Disabled has made this year to support students with disabilities and improve the university’s accessibility. The last part of the workshop involved opening the floor for attendees’ opinions and suggestions. Mentioning the short application period for dormitories, the need to make it easier for international students to open accounts at on-campus banks, and the issue of the Siheung Campus administration not informing members of its campus about high-voltage power lines, Professor Jeehwan Park, associate dean for student affairs at the Graduate School of International Studies, advocated democratizing communication within the university. The workshop concluded on time with a request for attendees’ cooperation in the diversity statistics research to be conducted in January 2025.