In the afternoon of the same day, the BBS' Administrative Committee issued "An Open Letter to All Users of SMTH", stating their stance on users outside the university. ""The history of SMTH in the past decade has shown that, with a friendly community atmosphere, good academic discussion, development of informational sections and effective, strict internal site management, users outside the campus are not the cause of mismanagement, nor the source of various destabilizing elements. On the contrary, a fully open, strictly managed off-campus user community has proven to be instrumental to SMTH's vigor and quality, and hence contributes in a tremendous way to the upholding of the academic reputation of the University."" The Committee went on stating that, ""Users outside the campus are an extremely important source to the vibrant culture of SMTH. Come what may, SMTH will never forget its many users outside the campus, past, present or future."" At the same time, many public users found they were unable to connect to SMTH normally. Instead, they were greeted with the welcome message: ""Effective from today, BBS SMTH is restricted to only on-campus access. All outside IP's are blocked.""