The RIT Iceberg: Exploring RIT Student Culture

The RIT Iceberg exhibit seeks to exhibit, educate, explore, and engage visitors with the RIT’s vast student culture. Built off the prior work of Igor Polotai, who cataloged over one hundred entries of RIT folklore, obscure history, and fun facts. This exhibit is an expansion of the original Iceberg, showcasing a curated selection of the origins of jokes, sayings, legends, pranks, stories, and folklore that shape the RIT student experience. The original RIT Iceberg, released back in August 2023 on the r/rit Reddit page, was born out of a passion to record the material culture and the lived experiences of RIT students. It was a project to see which stories persisted, which perished, and what that tells us about the evolution of the RIT student. This was accomplished through archival study, oral history interviews, and preservation of digital sources. This new exhibit expands the team from a single, passionate student to a multidisciplinary team, funded by the RIT Department of History. The exhibit consists of three components. First is the Physical Display, where visitors will be able to watch student-created videos and songs from years past, and connect with replicas and recreations of the material culture that makes up the foundation of RIT collegiate folklore. Second is the Interactive Display, where visitors will be able to participate in a communal activity that symbolizes the nature of student culture, and further connects to the archival work of the RIT Iceberg. Current students and alumni will also be able to further contribute to the project by recording their own experiences and stories that they learned, ensuring that their experience is forever recorded. Finally, this exhibit will also showcase a brand new website and a digital repository where visitors can browse the full work of the RIT Iceberg and dive deeply into its materials. Coinciding with the exhibit, the second version of the RIT Iceberg and a documentary on the project will also be released, almost two years after the original Iceberg release. With this exhibit, we hope to showcase what is so unique about the past and present students of RIT, and what they have done to shape RIT into the world-renowned institute it is now.

The full logo of the RIT Iceberg Project