New restrictions hinder spirit of Beer Bike

By Staff Editorial     3/19/09 7:00pm

There are no Rice traditions that compare to Beer Bike. Not Rice baseball, not O-Week and most definitely not pumpkin grades. Thus, you will understand why we are more than a tad perturbed that the planners of this year's Beer Bike have changed the format of this year's parade, limiting all colleges to only one truck (see story, page 5). We take exception to this decree, made without student vote and with little student consent outside of each college's coordinators, for a multitude of reasons. First, and perhaps foremost, is the reasoning that the restriction of trucks will somehow prepare students and coordinators for the pending arrival of two new colleges. This reasoning is flawed - how will imposing restrictions on this year's students prepare them, or the coordinators, for the addition of Duncan and McMurtry? How will fewer trucks ready us for next year's increase? The only reason that this may help us is that coordinators will have to deal only with finding one truck, which may have been a planned imposition for next year, as Duncan and McMurtry, the two largest colleges, would, most likely, have filled the most trucks with those plastic pellets of pain. (Or, for the pessimistic, Duncan and McMurtry could possibly lack the college cohesiveness that necessitates the filling of balloons, putting them at an obvious disadvantage, but we digress).

Likewise, where does this "preparation" stop? Are we to keep two lanes of the Beer Bike track purposefully blocked off, so that the bike teams acclimate themselves to 11 competitors? We would ask if Duncan and McMurtry would be open to jacks as well, but that questioned was answered long ago.

Secondly, this check eliminates a severely important part of Willy Week - inter-collegiate competition. Beer Bike, and the events leading up to the race, imbue students with the sense of college connectedness that has faded since its O-Week height. If we remove the intrinsic sense of "us versus them," the congregation inside of each college will weaken, or will at least be nowhere as strong as it could have been for some. Granted, certain colleges produce fewer balloons than others, but this is no reason to get rid of the entire process. When extrapolated, this logic would dictate that the talent of Will Rice College, which has recently been the favorite during the Beer Bike races, should be dispersed among the other colleges, such that each stands an equal chance at victory. This removal of rivalry is an affront to students across the campus, squashing competitiveness and precluding any future resurrections of now-dormant balloon-filling contests. We are sorry to see this tradition go, and we hope those in charge next year will rescind the imposition.

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