The schedules for the next three weeks will be online tomorrow afternoon, according to the update, as well as the schedule for the exam period in quartile 2. The adjusted academic calendar is already available via the Education Guide. All quartile 2 exams will be postponed by one week. The locations will remain the same. Quartile 3 will be shortened by one week, by dropping the eighth week. The dates for quartile 3 will be available from January 31.

Questions from students

Around 250 students have signed a petition today because they disagree with the university’s approach. They are calling for alternative solutions because they fear that their planning will be disrupted.

Patrick Groothuis, Vice-President of TU/e: “We are aware that many students are concerned about the consequences of the adjustments. Our focus is now mainly on restarting and replanning education, but at the same time, we are taking stock of the issues for students and how we can help them. To this end, we are in contact with the University Council education committee, the Federation of Study Associations (FSE) and the umbrella organizations of the student associations. The interests of students are our top priority and we will do our utmost to find solutions for as many issues as possible. For instance, in quartile 3, we are going to take studyability into account, because the quartile is one week shorter. And we are also going to look closely at other student concerns. We will come back to this as soon as we can.”

Communication regarding the aftermath of the cyber-attack will continue to be shared via the TU/e web page. In addition, each department will have one academic advisor on campus to answer students’ questions. Students can raise issues via the education commissioner of their study association. Their contact information can be found on the websites of the study associations.

Restarting

The university is working hard to recover the network and get applications safely back online. Phone services (040 numbers) have already been restored. Over the next few days, parts of the network will be brought back online in stages, enabling access to further applications. A list of available applications can be found on the intranet.

The restart may cause disruptions in the coming period. Additionally, the DDOS attack on Surf’s network may cause internet connectivity problems. As a result, the university’s internal emergency number is not guaranteed to be accessible. A temporary emergency number has been set up as a backup: +31642933760.

A new update will be posted on Friday at 4 PM.