n awfully high percentage of the student population were "Ritas".

This is a simple question of grammar by form or grammar by meaning. If you opt for the former you are compelled to say that Buffalo is expecting 10 inches or fewer of snow.

Yeatsian assonance

The strand/strond pair exhibits not assonace, but consonance (and alliteration, but that's not to the point here). Assonance would be, e.g., strand and strap.

Well, you wanted pedantry.