History of Vassar.edu
Written by Aashim Usgaonkar, News Editor
Designed by Eric Estes, Design and Production Editor
Ever since its arrival to Vassar in 1995, the Internet has been an indispensible tool for increasing the efficiency with which information is distributed both to the Vassar community and prospective students. Vassar has evolved into a campus in which students, faculty and staff are able to “share information [in] complex and efficient ways,” thus “continually augmenting the information that is available to them,” according Vice President for Computing and Information Services Bret Ingerman.
Vassar’s homepage has always been something brewers are proud of, and it—along with the Internet itself—has evolved over these 15 years. Click on the arrows to go through these screenshots of Vassar’s homepage since 1995, and browse this rich history at your own pace.
The Internet arrived at Vassar prior to 1995. As I recall, we had an appletalk network that gave us access to the outside world in 1993, even if the Web itself (and thus, the Vassar Homepage) was in its infancy. I can’t speak to earlier days, but I wouldn’t be surprised if we were online far earlier than that.
In the 1992/1993 school year, I specifically remember following results for the Bush-Clinton election by visiting external servers. Weather and song lyrics were also popular searches. E-mail addresses were available that year, but we had to fill out a special request form to obtain an address. I am not sure if it is still used, but students used “BC” at that time to informally communicate on campus from computer to computer. BC performed the same functionality as MS Messenger, which was introduced to the public by Microsoft many years later. Did Vassar develop that BC program?