Grad students protest Ike plans

By Sarah Rutledge     9/25/08 7:00pm

When Hurricane Ike tore through Houston two weeks ago, it was expected that most of the city would lose electrical power. However, many of Rice's graduate students found themselves completely in the dark in other ways, as lines of communication with the university broke down. Last week, Graduate Student Association President Michael Contreras met with Dean of Graduate Students Paula Sanders to discuss the way the university handled the graduate student population during Ike. The GSA also provided an open forum Tuesday night for graduate students to share their thoughts. Contreras, a fourth-year civil engineering student, will assign a focus group to review the university's hurricane steps and to draft a proposal to Sanders next month outlining the ways in which the university could have better planned for the event.

The administration

In the week leading up to Hurricane Ike, Sanders was in talks with the Crisis Management Team - which dealt with hurricane preparation and progress - about strategies for keeping graduate students informed. She sent her first e-mail to the graduate students at large Thursday, the day before Ike hit, mentioning the possibility of an evacuation for students living in the Rice Graduate Apartments. Over 200 of those students living in the apartments were notified the next morning of the mandatory evacuation, and were taken to the Jesse H. Jones Graduate School of Management's McNair Hall for shelter during the hurricane.

---

---

Sanders said she could have sent out more notices earlier in the week to inform students of the CMT's plans.

"I agree that I could've done better on that," Sanders said. "I think it would've been better if I had communicated that there was uncertainty, that we were still weighing various factors. I can understand that people were distressed by that and I would certainly do things differently in that regard."

Sanders stayed in McNair Hall for three days during the storm. However, she did not send an e-mail during that time because she did not have access to the internet, she said.

"For reasons I can't really say, I wasn't able to access bulk mail lists ... that allow us to communicate with grads as a whole," Sanders said.

During that time, Sanders met with members of the CMT to discuss the best ways to communicate with students. She said the CMT decided text messaging and the Rice and graduate student Web sites would be the most efficient ways to provide students with updates, as data the CMT collected indicates that students check the Web sites frequently.

Sanders said she decided e-mail was not an efficient mode of communication due to the higher-than-usual frequency of bounced e-mails she received from nonworking addresses. She decided posting updates on the Web sites was a more effective way of distributing news to off-campus students.

"If you use that system and get hundreds of messages bouncing back, you run the chance of clogging the system so it doesn't work for anyone," Sanders said.

The inclement weather proved challenging for communications, she said. Students were encouraged on the Web site to call the CMT for emergency information, but this might have proved difficult to students without access to phones or computers.

Contreras had left Houston before Ike hit, so Sanders had no way to get in personal communication with the GSA, she said. The GSA is working on appointing a backup for such circumstances, she said.

Sanders said her talk with Contreras about the CMT's strategy in dealing with the Hurricane is proof that the CMT has areas of improvement. She said the CMT is continuing to debrief the situation and is looking to change its method of communication with the graduate student community.

Graduate student response

At Tuesday's forum, Contreras said he had heard complaints from graduate students about the nature of Sanders' Thursday e-mail, including that it was convoluted. Contreras said many students had not received the e-mail regarding the dry campus policy sent out to Rice undergraduates. Furthermore, while the administration may have forbidden students to return to campus following the hurricane, many faculty members were sending out different messages, he said.

GSA Parliamentarian Kristjan Stone said one professor did not extend project deadlines, making it nearly impossible for the graduate students not to return to campus that weekend.

"Some professors were actually putting pressure on grad students to . get things done over the weekend, and this was one of those cases," Stone, a physics graduate student, said.

Stone said students with no power at their homes returned to their labs and offices to do work.

"You think of Rice as being this ivory tower in a sea of no electricity or internet," Stone said. "Of course they're going to come to campus, especially when they have card access [to enter the buildings]."

GSA Representative Eileen Meyer said she disliked the apparent change in policy between 2005's Hurricane Rita and Hurricane Ike. Meyer, an astrophysics graduate student, said the university was open to sheltering all grad students with Rita, in fall 2005.

GSA Secretary Nikhil Gheewala agreed.

"I was disappointed compared to [Rice's] response to Hurricane Rita," Gheewala, a bioengineering graduate student, said. "It seemed like two different storms and two different responses. We received notification of the university's plans much more in advance with Rita."

Meyer said she was appalled by the lack of e-mails sent to the graduate students.

"We would understand if the storm was so bad it knocked out our e-mail, but the undergraduates were getting timely, informative emails," Meyer said. "Why didn't they just CC us [Dean of Undergraduates] Robin Forman's e-mails?"

Although Sanders' e-mail Thursday mentioned the campus' closure Friday and through the weekend, Meyer said the seriousness of the closure was not adequately conveyed to students.

"Grad students are used to campus being closed on holidays," Meyer said. "We work anyway. People have cell cultures to feed, and they're going to do it anyway, even if it's Martin Luther King Day. I don't think any of that was clear at all."

After the e-mail Thursday, Meyer said she did not receive any notice from the university until Monday evening, after Hurricane Ike.

"I almost, by the time we got an e-mail, expected it to be an apology [for the lack of communication]," she said.

Meyer said the updates on the Rice Web site were primarily meant for parents and public relations reasons and provided little information for students checking up on the school's status.

GSA evaluation

Contreras said many students had also complained about Rice's reasoning for keeping students away from campus.

"Is this a care issue or a liability issue?" Contreras said.

A student who wished to remain anonymous said she was forced to evacuate from the graduate apartments Friday morning and sought shelter in McNair Hall. Students were offered a place in Shell Auditorium or in the Anderson Family Room. She said most students opted for the auditorium. Students were urged to bring their own food and were served peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.

"We were an afterthought, and that's kind of sad," she said.

Proposal

Sanders said the CMT will review the GSA's proposal next month. She said this proposal will offer an unbiased and unedited insight into graduate students' opinions about the storm preparations.

---