After a year and a half away, SVA is back, in real life! With precautions including mandatory vaccination and mask-wearing in place to ensure the safety of the SVA community, the College has spent the past week welcoming new students with virtual and in-person information sessions, facilities tours and fun activities. This year’s Welcome Week included tracks for incoming first-year undergrads, graduate students—and for the first time—second-year students who hadn’t yet been to campus due to their fully virtual first year. 

SVA Student Affairs primed the students for the school year with weeks of Orientation blog content leading up to Welcome Week, covering everything from SVA’s history to navigating NYC to financial aid, and more. (This content will be available to all on the Orientation website later this month.) And Welcome Week was packed with fun events to get our new-to-campus students acclimated. After a busy but orderly move-in, students got to enjoy drag queen bingo, karaoke night, a dance party hosted by WSVA (SVA’s student-run radio station), comedy night and a back-to-school raffle with the SVA Campus Store. Plus, students heard about the important resources offered by various offices, such as the International Student Office (ISO), SVA Diversity, Equity and Inclusion, Student Health and Counseling Services, Student Engagement and Leadership, SVA Library and Career Development. 

Below is a photo gallery from this exciting first week at SVA. Best of luck with the new school year—and here’s to staying safe and being there for one another throughout the semester!