Beer Bike proposals misleading in intent

By Yan Digilov     1/21/10 6:00pm

The motions of change are incumbent upon the development of any progressive institution, and they should never be avoided out of fear of the unknown. But the notion that those in favor of maintaining the traditions of Beer Bike are merely resisting change could not be further from the truth.In a Thresher poll conducted last November, more than two-thirds of respondents expressed their desire to maintain the status quo and retain the trucks for the water balloon fight. The primary interest of the proposed redrawn plans for Beer Bike is the elimination of trucks, contrary to a message from Campus-Wide Beer Bike co-Coordinator Brian Henderson, who called the trucks' absence a "main disadvantage" for balloon delivery.

While Beer Bike coordinators have been talking for years about the possibility of eliminating the water balloon trucks, the opinion of the student body at large has been ignored in the matter. Beginning with last year's mandate of one truck per college, this small group of largely unelected representatives has been slowly trying to reshape Rice tradition under the guise of "knowing what is best," often without considering student opinion.

It would be short sighted and ignorant, however, to assume the concerns are not legitimate enough to warrant a fuller discussion with the student body. The challenges of obtaining trucks have placed many coordinators in very stressful positions leading up to the big day, and only with the help of precautionary measures have several colleges been able to evade disaster in the past.

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But it is unfortunate that no medium for such discussion has ever been created or proposed - a result perhaps not of human error, but rather structural deficiency. Since the actions of the coordinators have typically been entirely detached from the voices of students, no alternative plans to keep the current truck routes have been suggested. Instead, the easiest solution, and the one with the most support among planners, seems to be the elimination of a much-loved tradition.

The most disturbing part of the entire situation? The underlying intentions of the newly released proposals have not been revealed to the student body. Admittedly, in the interest of safety it seems perfectly reasonable to alter security precautions taken by the student volunteers. Yet that decision has already been made, again prior to the involvement of sufficient student input.

Why claim that safety is the foremost concern, when this can be addressed independently? Why did the first written appeal to the student body claim that the greatest advantages of the newly proposed plan are the improvements made to a previous, nonsensical plan that would have the balloon fight in the stadium? Why has there never been an attempt to put forth an alternative plan that includes the current parade format, but with a larger number of smaller trucks or any attempt to strengthen contingency plans that have proven successful in the past?

It is clear that the decision to drastically change the Beer Bike format has already been made, as far as many are concerned. And with neither a popular vote nor any other forum for conversation between students and their college leaders, it remains to be seen if the process that eliminated one truck last year can be reversed.

And so it is crucial that the interactions that students have with a select few college representatives emphasize the importance of maintaining parade traditions.

Students need to convey that while a traditional parade with floats from each college was at one time the way in which Rice celebrated Beer Bike, it has long since disappeared from students' institutional memory.

When Sid Richardson College and Lovett College began competing in the '70s with grand entrances to the race, a tradition was born. And when Will Rice College chose to further establish their dominance of Beer Bike by bringing water balloons in 1988, that solidified a new tradition. But the proposal of drastic changes to the parade coming from a committee of mostly unelected officials can in no way be dubbed "traditional." The students alone determine the line between tradition and committee planning.

In fact, by using this kind of misleading rhetoric - including unrelated motivations such as safety to justify the new changes, taking advantage of students' limited information about the event - the newest plan has done a grave disservice to one of the university's greatest historical institutions.

But worst of all, if the average students, the ones who have been left out of the decision-making process, do not speak up, either in person or via e-mail to beerbike@rice.edu, the structural deficiencies that have led to this misinformed situation will win out, and "tradition" will be created at the whim of a committee vote, as opposed to the student-driven winds of change that have been successful in the past.

Thus, any student who hopes to prevent a committee from remanufacturing Beer Bike and eliminating the biggest water balloon fight on the face of the earth must send a clear message to the proponents of the most recent changes: Go back to the drawing board and try again.

Yan Digilov is a Brown College junior and former Thresher sports editor.

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