Parade plans changed

By Seth Brown     3/10/11 6:00pm

Whereas students involved in past water balloon fights have paraded slowly along the inner loop, a lack of trucks to carry the balloons means that students will now fight solely on Founder's Court, and then make their own way to the track for Saturday's races - if they so choose.Due to last-minute cancellations by truck rental companies, only six trucks were still reserved by the colleges as of Wednesday - not enough to have the parade as in years past. Instead, students will gather on Founder's Court at 10 on Saturday morning for the balloon fight before the races begin at 11:30.

Campus-Wide Beer Bike Coordinator Matt Sawyer cited the rodeo and the possibility that truck companies might not want to rent to Rice for the dearth of trucks.

"The cancellation of the truck companies has thrown a very large wrench into what I feel was an extraordinarily good plan," Sawyer, a Sid Richardson senior, said. "We don't have the luxury of having all the trucks we need available to us throughout the city."

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Sawyer said that while there had been difficulties in past years with getting trucks, there had always been back-ups in the past. Sawyer said that the original parade plan, to have one stop at Founder's Court and one stop at intramural field six, based on student opinion collected at the beginning of the year, depended on having at least one truck for each college. However, over spring break, a number of companies cancelled their rental agreements with various colleges.

The current plan is to have each college ferry its balloons to Founder's Court using the remaining trucks in shifts before the balloon fight, with some colleges using the trucks from around 11 p.m. Friday to 3 a.m. Saturday and the others using the trucks from around 5 a.m. to 9 a.m., Sawyer said. The Beer Bike coordinators had hoped to have IM field six be the only stop, Sawyer said, but he said that staff at the recreation Center were uncomfortable with having it be the only stop. He said colleges which still have trucks will have priority in selecting which balloon transport shift each will take, and colleges which do not have trucks will borrow them from the other colleges during whichever shift they are not being used.

The balloons will be placed on the street around Founder's Court, with each college receiving its own piece of the court's perimeter for balloon distribution during the fight. Sawyer said Wednesday night that the campus-wide Beer Bike committee was working with the colleges to provide security for the balloons once they had been delivered. Each college has been asked to provide its own security on-site, Sawyer said, though he said that the colleges were considering paying for RUPD officers to provide security as well.

As for the fight itself, Sawyer said that students on the street will hand balloons to other members of their respective colleges on the lawn, with flags marking the curb to keep those participating in the fight itself from stepping off of the court. He said that there will be a $250 fine per trashcan for tipping over another college's trashcans, and that any water balloons lost in this way would have to be replaced by the offending college.

Sawyer said that hopefully the experience of not having trucks for the parade this year would mean that contingency plans for that eventuality would be drawn up in future years.

"It's an oversight of the committee in previous years and this year that we did not have a plan in place," Sawyer said. "However, it is one that next year's coordinators will work to address."

Sawyer said that that one way one Beer Bike is trying to address this issue for future events is by procuring its own bleachers through a proposal to the Asset Liquidation Funds Appropriations Committee to buy bleachers to be dedicated to Beer Bike, at a cost of $70-75,000. Currently, Beer Bike must rent bleachers from athletics, which means that Beer Bike must be scheduled around baseball's playing schedule. If Beer Bike had its own bleachers, Sawyer said, it might be possible to avoid having the event coincide with the rodeo, which would help in renting out trucks.

Baker College Beer Bike Coordinator Maria Pickett said that one of the advantages of using Founder's Court exclusively for the fight is that members of every college will now be able to engage with members of every other college, and not just those directly before and after in founding order. Pickett, a sophomore, said that she had not yet heard any complaints about the fight being stationary.

"I guess it's unfortunate that it's different than it used to be, but a lot of the people I've talked to are OK with it," Pickett said. "It's kind of cool to do something we haven't done yet."

However, Wiess College sophomore Andrew Badachhape said he was disappointed with the change.

"I think that the founder's court isn't large enough to really have the scaled balloon fight there normally is," Badachhape said.

RPC President Sara Millimet said that she wanted to emphasize the fact that the decision to have only a stationary balloon fight was made by all of the college Beer Bike coordinators, and not just Sawyer or the campus-wide committee.

"It's a really unfortunate event and all of the college coordinators came to the decision," Millimet, a Sid Richardson senior, said. "We're not necessarily happy about it, but we're doing what we can."

Badachhape also said that he thought that holding the fight at Founder's Court, without then having a parade to the race track, would negatively impact the race. According to Pickett, the Beer Bike coordinators are hoping to use food as one incentive to get students to walk out to see the races.

"We have a lot of food over there, we're going to try to have food along the way so that there's more incentive to go," Pickett said. "All the college coordinators will work together to get people excited and get people out to the races."

According to Sawyer, food at the track will include about 1,500 hamburgers from Prince's, more than 300 pizzas from Papa John's throughout the races, and about 1,500 servings of frozen yogurt from Tasty Delight. There will also be water available for all.

Sawyer said he didn't think it would be possible to move soaking wet people directly from Founder's Court to the track, but that he still encouraged students to go out to the track to watch the races.

"How things have worked has had to change," Sawyer said. "We will no longer have a procession toward the Hackerman Field."

As for the schedule at the track, Sawyer said that the alumni race will be started at 11:30 by Dean of Undergraduates John Hutchinson, the women's race will be started at 12:30 by Student Association President Selim Sheikh and the men's race will be started at 1:30 by Jen Cooper (Will Rice '90). Sawyer said that the Beer Bike Committee selected those individuals to start the races because of the support they provided to make the races successful.

The track itself underwent $11,000 in repairs earlier in the school year, Sawyer said, so that each college will have its own lane in the pit and so that each lane is a half-foot wider. Sawyer said that some additional asphalt was also laid to make the entrance and exit to the pit be smoother curves. However, Sawyer said the track will need a complete overhaul in order to be really safe for riders, to which end he said Beer Bike has submitted another request to ALFA for $300-400,000 to construct a new track.

"We didn't want to have to do heats because of time, and we felt very strongly that Duncan and McMurtry deserve to be part of the only race, not an exhibition like last year," Sawyer said. "[However], these are temporary fixes to what is going to be a problem for a number of years until students make it a priority to fix the Beer Bike track."

Sawyer said Spontaneous Combustion members Becky Hofstein, Adrien Pellerin, Danny Shanaberger and Winston Ware will be emceeing the race.

"SpoCo has provided four enthusiastic students who in order to emcee the race who have graciously agreed to be sober and provide the color commentary," Sawyer said.

Sawyer said that if the ambient air temperature for Saturday is predicted to be from 50-55 degrees or lower on Friday that the balloon fight would be cancelled because of safety concerns and that the coordinators of each college would determine how that college would use up its balloons. He said that because holding the races a week later last year cost Beer Bike and additional $3,000, the races would be held on Saturday no matter the weather conditions, though if the track was determined to be unsafe for bikers all three races would be beer runs.

Sawyer said that he predicted that the cost of Beer Bike on the whole would be about $24,000 this year. Beer Bike receives about $17,000 from the blanket tax and must fund anything over that using revenue from fines and money saved from previous years. Sawyer said that security costs and the cost of having REMS present will increase, from $1,900 last year to at least $2,300-2,400 this year, and that a private ambulance will be on campus for the entirety of the event. Security will be provided by 14 RUPD officers and student volunteers from each college. Sawyer said that Beer Bike requested 12 students from each college for security, but that each year some of these show up inebriated and must be turned away.

Applications to be the campus-wide coordinator for Beer Bike next year are due by March 21.

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