Tip of the Iceberg

Balloon Ritchie is probably the most known item on this iceberg. Balloon Ritchie is the balloon version of the RIT’s mascot, Ritchie The Tiger. Balloon Ritchie often appears at major RIT events, like Freshman Orientation, Brick Fest, Freezefest, Imagine RIT, and more. Balloon Ritchie is more iconic than Ritchie, so you can often see Balloon Ritchie popping up in many unexpected places, like stickers, magnets, little versions made out of clay or pom poms, and many other places. Clubs often fundraise by selling Balloon Ritchie merchandise, and you can even win your own Balloon Ritchie at events like Relay For Life. Official Balloon Ritchies have been made by local Rochester company Celebrations United since at least 2002. And it was the owner of the company, Bob The Balloon Guy, that invented Balloon Ritchie. Supposedly, it costs RIT one student’s full tuition per year to pay for all of the balloons they use on campus.

Covid era RIT has a lot of interesting events and history. There are a lot of things I could have chosen to represent this era of RIT history, but I chose the Covid Bingo, posted on r/rit on July 20th, 2020 by u/CovidBingoBoard, near the start of the pandemic. A later follow up post, posted on November 11th, 2020 by u/itsbigbraintimeyall, showcased a couple of squares that already happened (though the “Dorm Gets Quarantined” square was actually incorrect). 

Another funny moment from Covid was the DaBaby Concert. On August 25th, 2021, flyers of the DaBaby Concert happening that Saturday at the Gordon Field House were hung around campus and posted on r/rit. Hosted by BOFA Studios, this concert promised a fun time…in the middle of a global pandemic. Needless to say, this was a fake concert, because DaBaby was in the United Kingdom at this time. But it did cause quite a stir, and the joke has become another RIT meme that gets spread around. 

Dots refer to the two dots that were removed from the RIT logo, which caused a huge student uproar. The uproar was mainly over the fact that RIT was redesigning a lot of things that didn’t need redesigning, like for example the quarter system instead of the semester system, and the names of the buildings. The RIT logo being modernized was just another step away from the nerdy culture that made RIT unique in the first place, to another Ivy wannabe. The dots even got their own names, with the left dot being named Dottie and the right dot being named Bernadotte.

The Escherian Stairwell is a famous video made at RIT that went viral in 2013. Created by Film and Animation graduate student Michael Lacanilao for their master’s thesis, the purpose was to create a modern myth. In addition to the video, several websites, social media posts, and even a GoFundMe, all in the effort to have the video go viral. And go viral it did. So much so that Captain Disillusion even made a video on the Escherian Stairwell. But people say that if you go to Gannet Hall, you might stumble on this physics-defying stairwell. 

Girl Themed Party refers to a reddit post made by u/himar671819, in which they invited girls over for a “girl themed party”, whatever that meant. This Reddit post got a lot of attention, with many not knowing whether this was satire or not. The creepy responses the original poster replied with didn’t help the situation, so the post got removed by moderators. Which caused the mystery to deepen, as another user, u/pumpnecter, posted a follow up, asking why the post was deleted, and led to the best comment ever written on Reddit: “I don’t know what you mean by touch grass? We have a yard the girls can play in, we had a cool idea for apple bobbing…it’ll be a hoot and a ton of fun for all the girls.” This too was not received well, and this post was also deleted. Which caused a third user, u/Jiddlez, to post that they knew the original two posters, and that this wasn’t an act of satire. Overall, a weird situation. But, it did spawn a new meme template that gets shared around on r/rit.

“good and you?” is similar to “Bees?” in many ways. It’s a phrase you might encounter written in various places across campus, and also referenced by RIT students. The origins for this are slightly more clear than Bees?, however. Commonly, you’ll hear the explanation that someone wrote “How Are You?” in chalk, and people wrote “good and you?” everywhere in response, and it spread across RIT, and that it was mental awareness. However, during my research, I uncovered what may be the true origins of this. First off, the correct spelling is “good and you?” with no capitalizations and no other punctuation other than the question mark. Around 2017-2018, a group of students that lived on the same floor became good friends. They would nickname themselves “The Onions” after the softball intramural team that most of them were a part of. In September 2019, they decided to prank RIT by buying a bunch of chalk and having a team of about twenty students cover the entire campus with “good and you?” overnight. This happened probably around September 19th or 20th. They would repeat the prank in 2020. While many speculated that it was for mental health awareness, it was actually just for fun. As proof of the group’s existence, one member sent me a bunch of pictures and a video, showing the box of chalk that was used in the 2019 prank and the aftermath. They said that the pictures were taken on September 19th & 20th, 2019. 

Construction 105 is a well known art piece that is more well known by the name Infinity Statue or Infinity Loop, and is located in Infinity Quad. Created by artist Jose de Rivera in 1968, this statue actually rotates, albeit very slowly. So slowly in fact, that it was once broken for 8 years before someone noticed that it wasn’t moving. The issue seems to stem from the fact that the gears are not suited for the climate, and break constantly. Many engineering students at RIT have tried to fix it in the past by coming up with new gear systems that can survive RIT’s sometimes harsh weather. Another popular rumor is that the statue got its name of Infinity Statue not because of the mobius strip, but because from a certain angle and time of day, the shadow of the mobius strip looks like an infinity symbol.

 Instragram Accounts refers to several student made and run Instagram accounts. There is rit_underground and rit_afterdark, two Instagram accounts where people can anonymously post random tidbits about RIT, as well as more memey accounts like ritcones, rit_cursed_images, and rit_pink_juice.gang that sprouted up during Covid. Supposedly, there have also been conflicts between some of these accounts as well.

River Knoll Deconstruction refers to the long saga by RIT to demolish River Knoll and replace it with better housing that has, so far, not come to fruition. River Knoll was built in 1968 as temporary housing, meant to provide housing for just a couple years. They were not built to last, which explains why, fifty years later, River Knoll continues to be stuck in the past, and is consistently inhabited by rats and mold. No wonder it is the cheapest housing RIT offers, though if you are willing to make the most of it, many who have stayed in River Knoll have enjoyed it.

Oh boy, where to begin? ROO is one of the most infamous events in RIT history that many remember. ROO originated in 2017 during Freshman Orientation week. A mandatory freshman presentation, called “Alcohol and Chill”, was shown off to freshmen with the goal of teaching awareness, prevention, bystander education, and risk reduction. According to Sandra Johnson, the Senior Vice President of Student Affairs, “The overarching goal was to increase awareness and promote discussion about the ways we together can prevent instances of sexual misconduct on our campus.” And so, RIT hired some speakers, who created a 77 slide presentation on preventing sexual assault. However, one of those slides would be forever immortalized. The slide in question has a picture of the Winnie The Pooh character Roo with the slogan “Rub One Out”. In the photo that went viral, we can also see the caption “Sexual gratification can prevent sexual assault,” and in another photo of the slide we can see the caption “Because I would rather you rub run [sic] out.” This image sparked an internet outrage, with it spreading across Twitter and Reddit, and even reaching news sites like the New York Post. This snowballed very quickly into probably the biggest PR disaster that RIT has ever faced in recent years. On August 25th, 2017, Johnson released a response to ROO, that in typical RIT fashion, did little to address or quell concerns that students, faculty, and the public had. She claimed that the slide was taken out of context, and that many students actually liked the presentation, but did not release the presentation in order to clear up any confusion due to lack of context. About three weeks later, on September 16th, 2017, a PawPrint petition was created, demanding 1) the release of the full presentation, 2) an official apology letter sent to every student that attended the presentation, and 3) more careful vetting of future presentations. This petition was signed by forty seven members of faculty, and reached 300 signatures, but was basically dismissed by President Munson. The full presentation has never been released by RIT. However, from eye witness accounts, it seems that the ROO slide was not the only weird thing about the presentation, as the presentation also delved into foot fetishes and cam work. Later, on October 12th, 2017, u/rooethics released its data from polling 244 people from r/rit on ROO, which reveals that despite only about half of the respondents saw the actual presentation, ninety eight percent say they have heard of it, but sixty four percent said that they didn’t get offended by ROO. And with the class of ROO having graduated, the legacy of ROO largely remains only as a meme now.

schedulemaker.csh.rit.edu is a website created and maintained by Computer Science House, and ran on their servers on the third floor of DSP (formerly NRH). It’s a helpful website that helps students build schedules for their classes very easily. Simply select the classes you want or need to take, and either specific times yourself, or have the website generate schedules for you. You can even download the schedule and print it, if you want. It’s definitely a must know website for all students as they plan out their courses.

The Counter is another recent r/rit event that went viral on the subreddit. This event happened only seventeen days after the Girl Themed Party posts. On November 28th, 2022, u/hingpaning posted the post titled “They’re lying to us about the females here: Blowing the top off the RIT Ratio Lie: I’ve been counting,” referencing the fact that, according to RIT’s officially provided statistics, females have never made up more than thirty five percent of the student population since 2013. The poster, however, claims that they have been performing research by hand counting females during high traffic times, and claims that the actual RIT gender ratio is not two males per every female, but seven males per every female. The poster then continued to say that they would release their research paper in two weeks, which of course never happened, as the original post got deleted by moderators. Similarly to the Girl Themed Party posts, it is not known if this post was satire or not, but it spawned a lot of discussion and memes.

RIT has an expansive network of tunnels. It has two main tunnel systems: Dorm Side Tunnels (which connect the main residential dorms with some restaurants like Gracies, Beanz, The Commons, Sol’s Underground, and more), and the Academic Side Tunnels, which connect most of the main colleges (though this tunnel system is more complicated to navigate at times, as it’s not entirely underground). However, one challenge that all RIT students have to face at some point is the infamous Wind Tunnel, the stretch of the Quarter Mile Path with no protection from the elements. At least, unless you believe in rumors. A popular student rumor states that there is actually a tunnel that connects these two tunnel systems together, a small utility tunnel ment for running wires between the tunnel systems. This urban myth persists from year to year, but the existence of this connection has never been definitively proven, and this rumor is most definitely false.