Life's a Mitch: Leave one campus, enter another
Imagine Rice, but compressed to a 10th its size. Replace the green hedges with grey houses. Keep the old, lovely live oaks and Jim Love’s giant red jack. Add more art. Add a lot more art. You see the Menil Campus.
It is a nexus of buildings containing art. The buildings are art, too. Lawns and trees separate the buildings. The lawns often teem with picnickers, families, musicians, sunbathers and games of catch. You know the scene if you have passed through the academic quad these past
weekends.
The bastion of bungalows dampens the perpetual noise of traffic to a faint roar. The outdoors are as pleasant as the indoors. I guarantee a satisfactory experience.
Where is it?
Start at Willy’s Statue and head due north. Follow the streets across a bridge, past a park, across Richmond Avenue, and you will look right and see it. The Menil campus almost rubs shoulders with Rice’s campus. 1.5 miles away means a 30-minute walk, a 10-minute pedal or a seven-minute drive.
Next time you want to run the outer loop, consider running to the Menil and back. You will cover the same distance. Running away from campus will also give you incentive to complete the run. But if you need a break, wander inside the main building, the Menil Collection, for sweet climate control. Beware — they might not admit profusely perspiring patrons.
For those with particular attachments to Rice’s campus:
Love installations that combine light and space like Turrell’s Skyspace? Dan Flavin filled a defunct grocery store with fluorescent tubes. Can’t part with Mark di Suervo’s behemoth stainless and Corten steel sculpture on Herzstein’s lawn? Another one of his stainless steel-less sculptures sits on the Menil’s lawn. Need an all-quiet zone for studying? Enter Rothko Chapel, a large room hung with big blackened canvases.
If you like Rice’s campus, the Menil Campus is similar. If you don’t like Rice’s campus, the Menil Campus is different. Either way, it is worth one or two or infinite visits.
More from The Rice Thresher
Students of conscience should boycott Local Foods
Local Foods has served, for many years, as a casual Houston restaurant option for Houston residents, including Rice students. Folks on campus will notice that this option has become more proximate, as a Local Foods location claims space on campus in the Brochstein Pavilion.
Insurance options for Ph.D. students are overpriced and insufficient
Doctoral students at Rice are given insufficient health insurance options especially compared to institutions with graduate student unions. Aetna’s graduate student health insurance plan leaves students with significant costs compared to the minimum annual stipend. Additionally, the available Aetna plan offers insufficient benefits when compared both to medical insurance plans at peer institutions and to the non-subsidized Wellfleet plan – Rice’s alternative option for international students.
Keep administrative hands off public parties
Emergency Management is hoping to implement a new system that has students swipe their IDs when entering public parties to cross-check their name with a pre-registered list. This idea is being touted as an effort to reduce check-in time and lines at publics. The thing is – we are tired. After bans on events, APAC and dramatic changes in party requirements, we want hands off the public party.
Please note All comments are eligible for publication by The Rice Thresher.