Apex domains cannot have CNAME records.
Question and response
Question
dig student.rit.edu. NS
Answer
student.rit.edu. 5 NS ns1a.rit.edu.
student.rit.edu. 5 NS accuvax.northwestern.edu.
student.rit.edu. 5 NS ns2a.rit.edu.
Authority
The response has no authority records.
Additional
ns1a.rit.edu. 5 A 129.21.1.82
ns2a.rit.edu. 5 A 129.21.1.92
accuvax.northwestern.edu. 5 A 129.105.49.100
ns1a.rit.edu. 5 AAAA 2620:8d:8000:0:aba:ca:daba:ee
ns2a.rit.edu. 5 AAAA 2620:8d:8000:0:aba:ca:daba:ef
accuvax.northwestern.edu. 5 AAAA 2620:10d:2010:6011:0:0:0:100
. 0 OPT ; payload 1232, xrcode 0, version 0, flags 0