We love Rice. We hope our work this year reflects that.
Each year, past editors in chiefs have penned welcome letters to the Rice community about their goals for the upcoming year. Many of them have urged the community to trust the Thresher in our pursuit of accurate, thorough reporting and storytelling. We enter this year with a similar goal, but we don’t have an ask of our community or our readers. Instead, we are calling on ourselves to reach out to the Rice community as a whole and meet the standards of journalistic integrity that our community deserves and that we expect of ourselves.
As we begin our tenure as editors in chief, we are acutely aware of instances when Thresher coverage attracted the ire of readers and social media commenters. We welcome this criticism; it is both a reminder of how we can improve and a sign of when we’re doing our job right. As the only student-run news publication at Rice, we see ourselves as playing a vital role in facilitating campus discourse. But we understand that trust is earned, not given. So, we are taking steps that we believe will help us earn that trust.
Moving into this semester, we’re investing more time and resources in longer form stories in an effort to more holistically and responsibly report on complex issues that are relevant to our community. Additionally, we are expanding our online coverage to incorporate data journalism and multimedia storytelling to tell more compelling stories.
We are attempting to strengthen our relationship with the Rice community itself. In that spirit, we will be hosting office hours Thursday, Aug. 25 from 4 to 6 p.m. in the Rice Memorial Center’s Ley Conference Room. This is a chance for all members of the Rice community including students, staff and faculty to ask any questions they have about the Thresher as a publication or about our processes and goals. Beyond that, we are hosting monthly “Lunch and Learns” with journalism professionals, to which all graduate and undergraduate students on campus are invited to sign up.
For years, as a part of our staff training, we have asked everyone on the masthead to collectively choose one value that embodies the Thresher’s mission. Without fail, we have selected “trustworthy” each time. We rely on the campus community to trust our integrity even when they don’t agree with the content that we’re publishing. As editors of the Thresher, we love Rice and the values we believe it embodies. Our work in student media is an extension of that love. We wouldn’t do it otherwise.
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.
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