Twilight Zone

Around 2008 to 2010, you could call a phone number, and a person named John Piermarini, in a blazing orange jumpsuit, would bike to wherever you were on or around RIT, and deliver cookies straight to your room, for a price of two cookies per dollar, even if it was two in the morning. Since graduating RIT, John has moved to Boston and has started the small startup Sweet Idea in 2011, where he took his cookie on bicycle idea to Boston area colleges and universities, selling five cookies for five bucks, though it went out of business in 2015. He now works as a senior software engineer at Avero. 

Yet another semi-obscure place on campus, RIT has a fully operational cadaver laboratory in the Center Of Bioscience Education & Technology, that is used by Medical Illustration majors in the fall and by both Physician Assistant as well as Biomedical Science majors in the spring. There are many more weird labs hidden away in basements, like the Reptile Lab, which is said to be in the basement of one of RIT’s engineering buildings.

RIT and the CIA had a long history of working together covertly, beginning all the way back in the 1960s, with small donations from the CIA to the College of Graphic Arts and Photography. This changed drastically in 1979 when former Deputy Secretary Of Defense for the Nixon Administration, Dr. Merle Richard Rose, became RIT’s seventh president, and started to deepen the tie with the CIA. In 1980, the RIT Research Corps (RITRC) was created, which was a legally independent for profit subsidiary proprietary research company that was run by RIT. RITRC kept losing money and didn't make a profit for the next decade. In 1985, Rose secretly signed the 1985 Memorandum Of Agreement with the CIA, detailing the nature of RIT and the CIA’s relationship, as well as the relationship between RITRC and the CIA. This includes CIA funding for the Center for Imaging Science, and paying the salaries of the members of RITRC, in return for the Center focusing on tasks that would benefit the CIA, like improving spyware, surveillance, and satellite image science. RIT would allow the CIA to dictate the curriculum of the Center of Imaging Science, train and recruit students from RIT to join the CIA, have several CIA members become employed as trustees, directors, and board members at RIT and RITRC, and have a CIA officer on campus to act as a liaison between RIT and the CIA. In 1990, the CIA would give $855,000 to RITRC, causing RITRC to have its first profitable year since its creation in 1980. Overall, millions of dollars in secret CIA funding flowed into RIT and RITRC. This funding helped RIT launch its first PhD program, Imaging Science, in 1990. On February 7th, 1991, Rose announced that he would take a four month sabbatical to work for a confidential assignment. Since this was during the Persian Gulf War, many believed that Rose was fulfilling his patriotic duties, as he was also a retired colonel for the U.S. Marines. However, he actually went to a secret CIA base in Langley, Virginia. His real reason for his sabbatical is to help develop guidelines for how the CIA was to operate in a post Cold War era. Concerns, however, started to grow, as the secret was coming out. On April 10th, 1991, Richard gave a telephone interview with the newspaper Democrat & Chronicle, in which he acknowledged that he has actually been working with the CIA during his sabbatical, causing Democrat & Chronicle journalist Jennifer Hyman to drop her investigation into the RIT-CIA connections on May 16th, 1991, exposing millions of dollars in secret CIA funding and lies from Rose about the nature of the relationship. This caused an uproar at RIT, with many calling for Rose’s resignation. Things only got worse for Rose when on May 24th, 1991, Democrat & Chronicle released an investigation into a CIA report called “Japan: 2000”, which while not being written by Rose, had a foreword where he heartily endorsed the report. In the foreword, Rose describes Japanese people as being “creatures of an ageless, amoral, manipulative and controlling culture.” This report was the final straw that broke the camel’s back, and Rose was forced to return to RIT. In a meeting with Democrat & Chronicle as well as another newspaper that was investigating and reporting on all of this, Times-Union, Rose denies CIA meddling at RIT, but promises to launch an investigative committee into the matter. The committee, made up of RIT students, faculty, and board members, released their two hundred page report on November 15th, 1991, detailing huge CIA influence over RIT, and especially with the Center for Imaging Science, and the creation of the Imaging Science PhD program. The CIA would cut all relations and funding with RIT on September 6th, 1991, Rose would resign as president in June of 1992, and RITRC would close in 1999. Overall, this story is a huge part of modern RIT’s history, yet is not mentioned at all on RIT’s officially released history timeline. Perhaps there are more skeletons in RIT’s closet that are best left hidden.

I’m A Dunkin’ Man Myself refers to a small recording from the Public Safety scanner channel in 2006. Here is the full transcript: Cop 1: This is [unintelligible]. Is there a donut shop nearby? Cop 2: I’m sorry, can you repeat that? Cop 1: Donuts, they’re round things, hole in the middle, fried, you know glazed, jelly. Donut shop, is there a donut shop nearby? Cop #2: 1040 you have several choices. You got Tim Hortons. You have Dunkin Donuts. And uh Krispy Kreme. Which one would you prefer? Cop #1: You appear to be a subject matter expert, so I’ll defer to your suggestion, go ahead. Cop #2: I’m a Dunkin man myself. We have Dunkin Donuts down on Jefferson, near, just before Taco Bell. Cop #1: [unintelligible] I’m ready to go home.

Rice Gate is another r/rit inside joke, though less well known and referenced as the others. On January 27th, 2021, an unknown redditor posted about an alleged coverup by Salsaritas, an on campus Chipotle clone. In it they claimed that Salsarita’s brown rice was actually not brown rice, but was just white rice with salsa. Several people tried to debunk this, but were shut down as being RIT Dining propaganda. Eventually, people started harassing the Salsarita workers, and Salsarita put up a sign debunking Rice Gate the next day.

RIT used to have a multi-lane, bowling alley on campus, though this has since been closed. It used to be located near Ritz Sports Bar under the Student Alumni Union, where the current music rooms are located. Students could take bowling classes, join the bowling girls or boys team, or bowl for fun, according to a Pinterest post from the official RIT Pinterest account. In 1989, asbestos was removed from the bowling alley as well as 944 dorm rooms. The bowling alley got removed sometime in the 1990s. 

On September 26th, 2015, thirteen members of the RIT Sailing team camped at the Spruce Row Campground. Shortly after, a four to five foot fiberglass humpty dumpty statue was stolen from the campground’s mini golf course. Suspecting it may have been the college students, the campground owner called RIT’s Public Safety, and they recovered humpty dumpty from an apartment owned by a member of the RIT Sailing team. Two RIT Sailing members, Richard Cremin and Torey Sweet, turned themselves in, and due to the humpty dumpty statue being worth thousands of dollars, faced felony theft charges. The RIT Sailing Eboard faced harsh consequences from RIT, and the RIT Sailing team was disbanded for a few years due to grand theft humpty dumpty.

The Rochester Athenaeum was the predecessor to RIT. An athenaeum is a building or room that houses books, periodicals, and newspapers, but it also means a scientific or literacy association. The Rochester Athenaeum was founded in 1829 by Colonel Nathanial Rochester, and for five dollars a year (about $163 in today’s prices) you could hear lectures and debates from people like Charles Dickens, Fredrick Dougless, and many more distinguished speakers. In 1847 it merged with the Mechanics Literacy Association in order to create a single large library, and in 1891 it merged with the Mechanics Institute, a school for technical skills. The Rochester Athenaeum and Mechanical Institute would not change its name to Rochester Institute Of Technology until 1944. The RIT 175 documentary goes more into depth about this era of RIT history.

The Snowman Picture is one of many famous not safe for work images that were taken at RIT (another example being the infamous Dick Stall). Created by an unknown but talented snow sculpture in 2002 in front of Sol Huemann dormitory, this image went viral both in RIT and also around the early internet. It even got posted on “Main”, a Russian knockoff of Reddit. 

Syrup Guy was an RIT student that got sent a month of food after asking Reddit whether or not he could survive a week on only a bottle of syrup. On January 23rd, 2018, u/electriccheeseburger posted on r/NoStupidQuestions whether he could survive a week on just a bottle of syrup until he could buy more groceries due to him being a broke college student. In response, many redditors donated either money or food to him, or pointed him to many helpful places that could give him more food than just a bottle of syrup. Overall, he got over a month of food from the redditors. UPDATE 8/11/23: If you find yourself in a similar situation, check out RIT FoodShare, the Henrietta Food Cupboard, or other Monroe County food cupboards.

The Hub (not the physical printing store on campus) is a digital file sharing server that has been in operation for decades. Due to its users following Fight Club’s first rule, not much information or an easy way to access The Hub exist. But, from what I could gather, in order to access it, you need a specific browser, url, and authorization. Once you access it, you can see what other RIT students have uploaded, or upload content yourself. The Hub hosts a lot of stuff, from pirated textbooks, homework solutions, shows, anime, and even adult videos, some of which were filmed on campus. It had the phone numbers for the NRH elevator, allowing people to call the NRH elevators and speak to the elevator passengers via the intercom. It also had the song “No Sex In The Handicapped Bathroom,” which became a popular song shared between Hub users. As of 2017, The Hub was still in operation, though again, the secrecy around it makes accessing it difficult for those not in the know. UPDATE 8/11/23: Former Hub user GLaDOS has given me additional context on what the Hub was, and what “Strawberry Kiwi” was (link)

Speaking of dorm side tunnel murals, many tunnel murals have been vandalized in the past. One prominent one that has been vandalized twice is the Muslim Student Association’s murals. Vandalized in both 2011, and in January 2017, the MSA has had to paint their mural at least three separate times. In 2017, around the time of Trump’s Muslim Ban, someone scratched the words “hate” and “cunt” into the mural, and tried to cross off the word “science” that was painted on the mural. The perpetrator was, to my knowledge, never caught by Public Safety.