Freshman involvement vital for campus

By Zach Marshall     8/28/08 7:00pm

Look, I know we were all freshmen once, but I think it is time we be reasonable, time we be honest with ourselves, time we sit down and say, "Enough is enough - we hate the freshmen." Every year, a wave of greedy-eyed, overzealous freshmen swarm in like gold prospectors and either steal or ruin all Rice's valuable resources and perks, which are naturally meant for the use of the upperclassmen. With their sophomoric antics (no offense, sophomores) and sociopathic, type-A personalities, these freshmen annually reduce Rice to a state of martial law: Every fall, freshmen create Soviet-era queues at the bookstore, turn Autry Court into a zoo, overrun our precious sports fields, steal all the good study spots on campus, occupy every single Fondren Library computer the one time I desperately need to print out a document, get ridiculously drunk and then puke directly outside my door on Friday night . like they do every year. Not that I am bitter.Isn't the freshmen progression slightly too predictable? Each fall we witness a bunch of cocky little runts inundate the campus, flood every useful facility, ruin college aesthetics with their haughtiness, take all the KTRU bumper stickers so I can't even find the yellow letters necessary to spell "Zach is a stud," act like idiots on the weekend, slowly lose their zeal for life due to the horrors of orgo and physics classes, generally make stupid decisions and total fools of themselves and ultimately fail to rebrand themselves as something other than the pathetic geeks they were in high school. It is not until Christmas that things return to normal, i.e., when conversations are no longer routinely punctuated by a prepubescent voice behind you squeaking, "That's what SHE said!". or more accurately, not squeaking anything at all, but rather silently thinking similarly-perverted thoughts behind an awkwardly blank look. Those socially backward freshmen.

Of course, we upperclassmen can prevent this horrible freshman invasion. I truly believe that if the upperclassmen band together, we can prevent most of the freshman from majorly ruining the first half of the school year, like we did when we were freshmen. How do we do it?

Well, first of all, we don't tell the freshmen about the really, really awesome, secret stuff that Rice has to offer its students. The way I figure, they can't ruin what they don't know about.

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Now, I am no sadist - I mean, I think it is only fair that we tell the incoming freshmen about the water fountain in the Rice Memorial Center that actually sprays Dr. Pepper, the ultra-secret ticket-free parking lot on the northeast corner of campus and how President David Leebron loves to have raw eggs thrown at his office window. These secrets are time-honored perks and traditions that all Rice students deserve to enjoy. Specifically, though, I am talking about a much more serious issue:

Leebron's sinister plot to take over the world.

Just kidding. Actually, my idea is much less cool: I suggest that we don't tell the freshmen about civic involvement, both at the campus and national level. Lame, you say? Just listen. Denying the former will prevent freshmen from making really stupid mistakes like attempting to improve already-perfect entities like the residential colleges, the Student Association, academic curricula and student-administration interaction in general. Failing to mention the latter will thankfully encourage freshmen to skip the polls this November, thereby helping to avert the election of a complete idiot.

Additionally, keeping freshmen from voting in the national election should not be overly difficult - according to Thresher statistics, only 64 percent of campus-registered Rice students voted in the 2004 presidential election. If we can keep freshmen from getting involved with their college governments and national politics, there's no danger that they can make Rice University a different place from the perfect campus we know and love.

Therefore, this fall, I challenge you to join me in not telling freshmen about the importance and effectiveness of civic involvement at Rice. In a year or two, they'll thank us.

Zach Marshall is a Martel College senior.

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