News

Hundreds of people attended a performance by an RIT-related act during the first week of the 12-day Rochester Fringe Festival, with students, faculty, and staff contributing music, dance, comedy, poetry, photojournalism, in downtown Rochester. And nearly 20 other RIT-related performances are scheduled later this week.

RIT students, faculty, and staff will contribute music, dance, comedy, poetry, photojournalism, and more during the 12th annual Rochester Fringe Festival, which begins Tuesday, Sept. 12, and runs through Sept. 23 in downtown Rochester.

Join President David Munson as he welcomes the RIT community back to campus and to the beginning of a new academic year. The Welcome and State of the University Address is 3 p.m. Tuesday, Sept. 12, inside Ingle Auditorium in the Student Alumni Union. A reception will immediately follow in the adjacent Fireside Lounge.

Sarah Godoy joined RIT in August as the new director of Counseling and Psychological Services (CaPS). She studied psychology and Italian at Vassar College, earned her doctorate in clinical psychology at American University, and completed her postdoctoral fellowship at University of Michigan.

A commemoration to rename an RIT residence hall after a granddaughter of abolitionist Frederick Douglass will be held Thursday evening in conjunction with RIT’s annual Lighting the Way ceremony to welcome women and non-binary students to campus.

Thousands of RIT’s first-year students participated in the seventh Hunger Project on Aug. 25 in Ritter Arena. Students packaged more than 115,000 meals for the Rochester community that will be distributed through FoodLink.

Turn big dreams into reality. That was just one piece of advice for the newest Rochester Institute of Technology students who attended the New Student Convocation on Aug. 24. The annual event included welcomes from administrators, the new Student Government president, and a lesson in adventure featuring RIT President David Munson.

Darcie Jones, a fifth-year mechanical engineering major from Reading, Pa., is this year’s Student Government president, representing more than 19,000 students on RIT’s Henrietta and overseas campuses. There were four sets of candidates this year, the most in recent history. This year’s Student Government vice president is J.T. Lapham, a fourth-year biochemistry major from Queensbury, N.Y.

A kosher deli, a food truck serving gourmet burgers, self-checkout micro-markets, and a buffet-style, all-you-care-to-eat Gracie’s are welcoming RIT students back to campus this academic year. Easier ordering and accessibility to know when an order is done will also be found throughout campus.

The new undergraduate students come from 48 states (all but Iowa and Wyoming); Washington, D.C.; Puerto Rico; Guam; U.S. Virgin Islands; and 47 countries, with the largest contingent coming from India, Canada, and China. In addition, there are 927 new graduate students.

WHEC-TV reports on RIT’s pledge to have 50 percent plant-based dining options by 2025. Interviews with Don LaFlam, executive director of RIT Dining, and Darcie Jones, RIT Student Government president.

RIT is renaming Nathaniel Rochester Hall after Fredericka Douglass Sprague Perry, granddaughter of Frederick Douglass and a former student of the Rochester Athenaeum and Mechanics Institute, which later became RIT.