Welcome to SKKU, Freshmen!
With the start of a new school year, the 2024 entrance ceremony took place at the Sungkyunkwan University (SKKU) Natural Sciences Campus (NSC) to welcome freshmen. On February 27th, the ceremony began with a welcome speech by President Yoo Ji-beom. The students sang the school anthem and were officially welcomed to SKKU as 2024 freshmen. Afterward, the Kingo Cheerleaders introduced the SKKU cheer songs and performed them on the cheerleading stage. As the highlight of the ceremony, students flew paper airplanes, a symbolic annual event held at every SKKU entrance ceremony. The celebrity students of SKKU, including Zoa of the K-pop group Weekly and the actor Shin Hyeon-seung, both in the Department of Theater, also joined this event and afterward delivered words of welcome and encouragement to the first-year students. Despite these exciting welcome events, there were several problems during the ceremony. According to a freshman in Social Sciences who attended the event, the students had to wait in their seats during the ceremony for several hours and were not allowed to exit the location even for emergency purposes, leaving them both frustrated and confused. On the first day as Kingos, the first-year students had to wait for countless hours without a hint of why the delay was persisting.
The First Trip as a Kingo
After the entrance ceremony, the freshmen and the other SKKU students left the campus to attend the three-day freshmen orientation trip. Each department had different trip locations; the School of Business and the Department of Biomedical Engineering went to Yongin City, and the College of Engineering and the School of Convergence traveled to South Chungcheong Province. On the first day, students were instructed on safety procedures to follow during the trip, and recreational events were hosted to help the freshmen get along with senior students. The second day of the trip was packed with recreational events, performances, and games. President Yoo Ji-beom visited each location to deliver welcome speeches to the students. On the last day, students returned to the Humanities and Social Sciences Campus (HSSC), wrapping up the three-day event. A freshman from the Department of Business Administration who attended the trip told the SKT that he was glad he signed up for this event, as it felt like the best welcome he could ever receive from SKKU. The trip opened up the beginning of the 2024 school year, welcoming the first-year students as part of SKKU.
