RIT Looks Back

Written by Torie Bonnet on Fri 10/10/2008 at 7:42 pm

Photo credit: Maxwell Kepler

Everyone knows that RIT is a male-dominated school, boasting a male-to-female ratio of about 65 to 35. But on this Brick City weekend, the Department of Archives, the College of Liberal Arts, and the Women’s Center paid tribute to the women of RIT.

An exhibit was held on the third floor of Wallace Library on Friday to celebrate the achievements of women throughout the long history of RIT. Photographs, advertising material, student samples and news articles, were compiled and displayed. The works showed not only the presence, but the prominence of women in RIT’s history.

Founded originally as Mechanics Institute in 1885, RIT began not as an accredited university, but a mere trade school for lower class immigrants. The school was predominately female and offered programs such as carpentry and domestic science, a program in which women learned household skills such as cooking, sewing, and hat making.

“Women needed to work outside the home,” said Archivist Becky Simmons. “Men just weren’t making enough money,” Simmons added.

The display consisted of about eight glass cases of the materials, with descriptions of each piece as it pertained to history, starting in 1885 and ending in 1946. “We had to dig,” said Simmons. “It’s not like you can just look up a book and get it out.”

The project took about four months to complete and will be on display for about a month, after which a new display will be put in its place.

Visitors trickled in and out, silently appreciating the achievements of familiar names like Kate Gleason. Alumni walked through the displays, reminiscing about their days at RIT, and their contributions to the history of women on campus.

“We couldn’t wear pants to class,” remembered one alumna, Karen Gates Andrews, a Retailing and Business graduate of 1971. “And I remember penny-a-minute nights. If you wanted to stay out past curfew, you had to pay a penny for every minute you were out after 11 [p.m.],” Andrews added.

Times have changed here at RIT. We do not have curfews anymore and women are certainly free to choose what they wear to class. But women on campus will forever be indebted to those women applauded by this exhibit.