Pratt Institute

Pratt's division of Student Affairs has been working full-time since the fire on reaching out to affected students individually and setting up group meetings to address and hear concerns. The Office of Health and Counseling is working with affected departments on setting up collective sessions to help deal with the trauma of such significant loss. The President of Pratt Institute and Vice President for Student Affairs will be holding a meeting on Monday, March 4 for freshmen, sophomores, and juniors in the painting program to address additional concerns. For more details, visit inside.pratt.edu.

The Institute created a Fire Recovery Task Force Group, open to all current students, faculty, and staff. The group was formed to coordinate and expedite programs and services to Pratt students in the fire recovery effort. It has met twice and held a Town Hall meeting last week to answer questions from the Pratt community regarding the recovery efforts. More than 100 members of the Pratt community attended.

Pratt's recovery team has removed all student artwork from Main Building and it is being stored in a secure and dry place. The Institute plans to distribute the salvaged artwork and materials to students upon their return from Spring Break and relocation to the ARC building on Monday, March 18. All work will be returned to the new spaces in the ARC to avoid any subsequent damage and provide adequate security. The individual academic departments will organize and label the work and give their students a time frame for picking it up. At the time the work is returned, it will be assessed for soot damage and whether or not cleaning services to remove soot are needed.

Pratt's first priority in all of its planning was to ensure that those students who have been most affected were working again as soon as possible, particularly the students who lost studios and work. The Institute provided Utrecht gift cards to each of the senior fine arts students with a studio on the sixth floor of Main Building as well as to junior and sophomore students who had supplies in classrooms and lockers on the fifth floor. Utrecht also provided additional gift cards to seniors and donated a significant amount of materials to be distributed by the Fine Arts department. The Institute continues to provide donated supplies to students to ensure they have the materials they need to keep working.