Dear students,
Thank you for your resilience and patience as the university has worked to transition your classes to remote learning. We know this has been a major adjustment for you, your professors and our community. There have been some bumps along the way, but we’ll get through this together.
As you may know, this week our community has experienced malicious intruders joining Zoom meetings and making reprehensible racist and sexist comments. Their ignorance is hurtful to all of us, and we especially want any students who were impacted by this to know we stand with you. And we are making changes.
Effective tonight, we are implementing the highest level of access security in Zoom.
This will require users who join classes or meetings to be authenticated through the UT Austin Zoom system and use a Zoom application. Even if you have already joined a Zoom meeting successfully, it does not mean that you have joined in a way that will work tomorrow.
Steps You Need to Take
This is important. Students need to take two fairly simple steps to ensure seamless access to your classes tomorrow.
- If you haven’t already, you must claim your UT Zoom account by going to utexas.zoom.us and registering by clicking on Sign In. You will not be able to directly join a class or meeting until you have done so. Using any other Zoom account, including Zoom’s free account, will not work.
- Download and register the Zoom app on your devices (including computers). This is necessary so that Zoom’s application can validate you as part of the UT community every time you access a class or meeting. The Zoom app is available in the Apple App Store and in the Google Play store for Android. The desktop app can be downloaded at utexas.zoom.us. Click Download Client, and then download Zoom Client for Meetings.
That’s all you have to do, but these steps must be taken before you join a class or meeting. Otherwise, you will be delayed joining class while you download the app, or you will be placed in the Zoom Waiting Room where you will have to wait for your instructor to manually admit you.
Technical support is available to help any student who needs it. Contact the ITS Service Desk at 512-475-9400 or email zoom@utexas.edu.
We are fully committed to supporting you and your success. Regrettably, there are people out there who do not share our Longhorn values, and we need to take these additional steps in order to protect our UT community. We are here for you, and we will get through this together.
Hook ‘em!
David Platt
Vice Provost for Undergraduate Academic Affairs
Office of the Executive Vice President and Provost