Wall Street Journal Features "Southern Rhode Island Institute of the Arts" — A Fake University
GoLocalProv News Team
Wall Street Journal Features "Southern Rhode Island Institute of the Arts" — A Fake University
Southern Rhode Island Institute of the Arts was created about a month ago and promoted on Reddit. It is a faux institute of higher education.
Over the past month, it has been a darling of Reddit — the social media platform that has given life to crazed stock-hypes like GameStop and AMC.
GET THE LATEST BREAKING NEWS HERE -- SIGN UP FOR GOLOCAL FREE DAILY EBLASTNow, Reddit can claim to be the bastion of fake universities too.
The Wall Street Journal writes, “Southern Rhode Island Institute of the Arts is the most exclusive college you’ve never heard of. Why? It’s not real. It is, however, perfectly suited to this high-anxiety moment for high-school students around the country waiting to find out if they have been accepted to college. The fake school’s founders channeled their college admissions stress into inventing a university of their own.“
The university is known as SRIIOTA on Reddit and the posts even involve references to the Rhode Island Schools Design.
On Reddit, the "founders" of the university post under the name, "SRIIOTA_Ambassartor" -- emphasis on the "art."
A month ago, SRIIOTA posted to Reddit:
RISD is a larger school, so they aren’t able to focus as much attention on their students as SRIIOTA can with our 1:5 faculty to student ratio. They also focus on specialty more than us. SRIIOTA focuses on us students by teaching us the importance and variety of art along with how to make lasting contributions to our global society.
Our peers do sometimes cross register, but it’s mostly in cases that SRIIOTA doesn’t offer the course. The vast majority of us prefer to take classes at SRIIOTA whenever possible as the curriculum is superb here.
According to the SRIIOTA Ambassartors, they seek creative thinkers in the most cliche structure, "At Southern Rhode Island, we value outside of the box thinking. Create your own box with anything, and paint the outside of it with murals representing your personality and how you’ll fit in on campus."
Admissions Anxiety
SRIIOTA was created by Taha Demirkan, an 18-year-old who launched it on the “Applying to College” page on Reddit that claims 340,000 members.
The "Institute" was off and running and the admissions process began.
SRIIOTA Ambassartors posted, "Glad to see we have transfer applicants here! We only accept a few each year, so best of luck! If you’d like more information in the mean time, the A2C Discord server has a vast amount regarding SRIIOTA for you to view."
You really can’t have a college without having a mascot and SRIIOTA claims the soft shell crab and utilize the cheer “Go Soft Shells.” A little more staid than RISD’s sports teams which go by “The Nads” — so that students can cheer “GoNads.”
The Website is Simply Too Real -- Until Rick Astley Takes Over
The SRIIOTA team has created an amazing real website -- until each image morphs into a Rick Astley meme.
According to SRIIOTA's website, "Here at Southern Rhode Island Institute of the Arts (SRIIOTA), we aim to educate its students and the public of the importance and variety of art. Through appreciation, creation, and experimentation of art, we seek to lead students to discover and transmit knowledge and to make lasting contributions to our global society. SRIIOTA combines the elements of a small liberal arts college with the opportunities of a research university, providing its students unique experiences that will enhance their undergraduate experience."
