It was April 1995, and Charles Klein (Sid Richardson ‘97) was at work on the production of his first issue as Editor in Chief of the Thresher when a fire in the Rice Memorial Center rudely interrupted him.
“We were all suspects, and it was literally production night,” Klein said.
While the fire, started in Willy’s Pub by Will Rice college TK Alberto Youngblood, caused extensive damage to the Student Center, Klein managed to salvage one important thing: the current issue of the Thresher.
Despite being forcefully evicted from their workspace, the staff managed to put the news of the day to print. The front page folio the following day read “R.I.P.: Willy’s Pub (1975-1995),” and the main headline read “Student center fire ravages Pub.”
While it wasn’t a fire, a similar, deep-seated urgency spurred the Thresher’s founders to publish a newspaper for the Rice community.
The early history of the Thresher is short and incomplete. Ironically, as the Thresher worked to document the university outside the office, it maybe under-covered its own activities.
The Thresher introduced itself in its first ever editorial as “a paper for the students and by the students.” For 100 years, the Thresher has sought to provide the Rice community with a source of reputable news and offer a training ground for students to delve into the world of journalism because, as the Thresher’s first staff advisor Jen Cooper (Will Rice ‘90) put it, “there is no such thing as a practice newspaper.”
In late 1915, two students at the newly-formed Rice Institute concluded that the school needed a student paper and decided to start one as a private enterprise. They began forming a staff, but realized that private ownership of a school newspaper was difficult at best and dangerous at worst.
As they considered dropping the idea, President Edgar Odell Lovett encouraged them to continue pursuing it. In the end, they decided to place the paper equally in the hands of Rice’s three literary societies: the Owl, the Riceonian and the Elizabeth Baldwin Society.
On Oct. 17, 1916, the Rice Thresher was entered as a second-class matter (a standard periodical postage rate) in Houston, Texas, and so began the "fortnightly periodical published by the students of Rice Institute.” Under the leadership of Editor in Chief Will M. Standish (1916) of the Owl and Business Manager J.P. Markham (1918) of the Riceonian, the Thresher printed its first edition on Jan. 15, 1916 and, for the first time, provided the students and community of the Rice Institute a publication representing the “undergraduate viewpoint of student activities and campus life.”
Markham kept the paper afloat as it increased its size and expense in its first two years. The staff showered Markham with praise in final editorial of spring 1917, writing, “The Thresher owes to him its financial success, and consequently its existence. Without good business judgment the Thresher could never have come into existence, because it has had no financial backing save the personal liability of the members of the staff.”
Under the leadership of Markham on the business side and Standish, Managing Editor Eugene Millis (1917), and Associate Editor Ruth Sullivan (1917) on the editorial side, the paper began to find its stride. Soon, Thresher leaders began conversations about diversifying the newspaper’s leadership beyond the literary societies. However, all progress came to a standstill in 1919 with the onset of World War I, and, with it, a partially militarized campus and student deployments.
Despite having to cease printing for a brief period of time during the war, the Thresher saw a surge in numbers and popularity in the 20s. By 1922, the issues listed 29 staff members, including editorial staff, business department, reporters and “Thresher staff.”
The following year, the Thresher had established the first “athletic editor” position to further cover university sports and internal club matches. J.N. Rayzor (‘17), later a member of the board of trustees, was the first to fill this role.
Women were urged to join from the beginning, and the women’s literary society, the Elizabeth Baldwin Society, received equal representation on the board of directors. Sullivan held the role of associate editor, third in command behind the editor in chief and managing editor, for the first two years and was an influential member of the editorial board.
“Her editorials have been copied by the college press throughout the State, thus giving unmistakable evidence of their worth,” the editorial in her final issue read.
Despite Sullivan’s influence, women were not treated as absolute equals on the staff for a long time. A woman was not editor in chief until World War II.
The Thresher began to spawn even more new sections. In the 20s, the Thresher added a “society” column, its coverage including campus couple gossip, wedding ceremonies, club (society) gatherings and Mr. Roger’s holiday visit to campus in 1920.
In 1948, the Thresher upsized to a biweekly publishing schedule, publishing every Wednesday and Saturday, a streak that lasted until September 1949.
29 years later in January 1975, the Thresher again decided to publish biweekly. According to a an editorial that year, the Thresher almost tripled in size the preceding year, covering 24-28 pages of material each week.
“Our goal is to grow in depth and competence, not size,” a January 1975 editorial said.
Yet, after two and a half years of biweekly issues, the Thresher once again announced a cutback in the weekly schedule.
“The staff reached the decision when they discovered that there were other things to do besides working on the paper: sleep, eat, attend classes, and possibly even pass,” a July 1977 editorial said.
For the third and final time in January 1985, the Thresher decided to publish biweekly with a fine-arts focused Tuesday issue in order to detail the upcoming events of the week. However, after not even a year of doubled production, the Thresher eliminated its Tuesday edition due to financial problems.
In addition to publishing news about Rice, the Thresher maintained an outward focus and often weighed in on national issues. In a January 1974 edition, in line with the political zeitgeist, an editorial by assistant editor Gary Brewton (Lovett ‘76) weighed the pros and cons of Nixon’s impeachment.
“Whether it is government by crisis or crisis by government, the world and domestic crises are nevertheless real,” he wrote.
Throughout the 70s and 80s, the Thresher also published many pieces related to abortion and issues related to women’s health. The Thresher first took interest in covering of sexual harassment and Title IX issues on Rice campus in 1988, when Rice deployed its first sexual harassment task force in hopes of forming a new campus-wide policy.
In November, 1990, the Thresher broke a front-page story on “why you may never hear about sexual harassment on campus,” examining the first case to use Rice’s two-year old sexual harassment policy and calling the policy “inadequate” in comparison to other schools.
During the dawn of the computer age, the Thresher opted for an online edition in addition to its weekly print. News editor George Hatoun (Sid Richardson ‘97) created the first online paper in January 1996, coinciding with the Thresher’s 80th anniversary.
For most of the 21st century, the Thresher has maintained sections consistent with its current layout: news, opinions, arts and entertainment, sports and Backpage, with the exception of the “Lifestyles” section, which emerged in the early 2000s to provide students with “information about themselves.” By 2004, “Lifestyles,” had morphed into the “Features” section, which was eventually absorbed into A&E.
Many ex-Thresher editors went on to hold prestigious positions in their fields. William Broyles, Jr. (Hanszen ’66), a contributing editor to the Thresher, developed a successful screenwriting career, working on such films as “Apollo 13” and “Cast Away” in addition to founding Texas Monthly in 1972.
David Rhodes (Will Rice College ’97), currently President of CBS News and the youngest news network president in the history of American television, was also a Thresher staffer and frequently contributed to the opinion and sports sections as an undergraduate.
From room 104 of Lovett Hall, the Thresher maintained a semi-professional business operation for decades. Without the tireless work of the business manager and their staff, there would be no Thresher and no news. To this day, the business side still inconspicuously works from a small cubicle in the back of the Thresher’s office.
The paper began without financial backing. Markham, the first business manager, generated enough advertising revenue to fund the paper until 1919, when the Student Association was created and a form of the current blanket tax system began. Under this system, students could pay an optional fee to have access to the Thresher, a copy of the Campanile and tickets to sporting events.
Even with blanket tax funds, the Thresher had a difficult time switching to a weekly paper. According to an editorial published in the May 13, 1920 issue, “it [was] not possible to pay for the whole paper with advertisers.”
Financial difficulties perpetually plagued the Thresher. According to 1970-1971 Business Manager David Klein (Will Rice ‘71), the Thresher had, before him, never made a profit. However, as advertising revenue began increasing, the Thresher gained expendable income. Much of this income was distributed among the staff and leadership of the paper. While we cannot know the pay structure for the first 50 years of the Thresher, D. Klein recalled that the business manager and editor in chief would receive a stipend in addition to splitting leftover profit, receiving 45 and 55 percent, respectively.
When the financial affairs of the paper were forced to creep out of the shadows, the livelihood of the paper was threatened. From this payment method the Thresher fell victim to an accounting scandal. In 1965, the student senate investigated the Thresher’s accounting books and discovered that the business manager had purposely underreported the Thresher’s revenue by approximately $1,000 to the editor in chief. The Senate discovered that the Thresher saved “by the end of the year a sufficient sum to pay the salaries of editor and business manager,” according to an article in the Feb. 11, 1965 issue. By misreporting Thresher profits, the business manager was attempting to keep the editor in chief from “[spending] every cent that he could get his hands on in order to be remembered as the most prolific Editor in history.” According to Hugh Rice Kelley (Wiess ‘65), editor in chief at this time, “the secret of this deception is passed on from each business manager to his successor.”
The business and advertising side avoided scandal for the next forty years, but was hit harder than ever before in 2004 when Jen Cooper, the advisor, discovered that business manager Polly D’Avignon was embezzling money from the Thresher.
D’Avignon was spread too thin between numerous organization and engagements, according to Cooper, so she disappeared from the Thresher office and neglected her duties as business manager. In light of the business manager’s absence, Cooper assumed her responsibilities in late November and soon “noticed a series of unexplained charges from the Thresher’s credit card merchant account” during a routine audit of the Thresher’s finances.
Through further investigation, Cooper determined D’Avignon had transferred funds totaling $5,288 to her own personal card over seven charges through the Thresher’s credit card machine. Cooper later discovered that the student had dire financial problems and had been unable to register and pay for classes. Because D’Avignon was no longer enrolled and not technically a student, the university turned the case over to the Houston district attorney. The Thresher ultimately did not take a financial loss, as the university had insured the business manager position for $9,000.
The business manager has always held enormous responsibility with the Thresher’s finances. Crystal Davis (Lovett ‘87), business manager from 1985-1986, remembered carrying around $50,000-$60,000 in checks in her backpack. Today, the business manager continues to oversee all the paper’s finances, but through systems and accounts mandated by the university, which Davis thinks “made that aspect much more secure,” Davis said.
Although the Thresher has primarily relied on advertising revenue to supplement blanket tax, revenue fluctuated greatly throughout time. Despite this, generations of business managers have held a mentality of self-sufficiency by attempting to avoid paying staff with blanket tax money and attempting to decrease dependence on the university. In Cooper’s words, “the less we ask for money, the more freedom we have.”
The Thresher has occupied both extremes of public opinion while serving the campus as an important news source. For its entire existence, much of the community has seen the Thresher as a dependable, well-written news source despite controversies. Such controversies were seen over the Thresher’s coverage of the Vietnam War and anti-war rallies in the late 70s. Throughout the period, the Thresher continued their traditional stances on campus issues, which RIce history professor John Boles (Will Rice ‘65) described as “anti-administration [and] pro-student”.
With this stance Boles remembers “occasions when a lot of faculty were just kind of embarrassed by the Thresher — ashamed of it,”. He remembers “having visitors on campus and hoping that they would not see the Thresher lying around. That, to me, is kind of sad.”
Into the 80’s, Davis recalls how the lack of administrative oversight and control over all programs at Rice prompted a strong reaction from the Thresher.
“The relationship with the university administration was a little antagonistic on the part of the Thresher and mostly one of benign neglect on the part of the administration,” Davis recalled. “While the Thresher itself could have been antagonistic or critical, I don’t think the university cared much one way or the other”
In 1990, the Thresher hit what many faculty considered its high point. Rice was selected to host the G7 summit, an unofficial forum of leaders of the world’s seven wealthiest industrialized countries, including Francois Mitterand, Margaret Thatcher, Helmut Kohl and George H.W. Bush. To cover the massive event, the Thresher brought in editors from 15 other university papers to campus, raising the Thresher’s profile across the country.
“I know that the professional journalists that were here really enjoyed meeting the student journalists from all over the nation,” Boles said.
In the years after the summit, the Thresher had difficulty maintaining its credibility within the community. Regardless of the quality of the news writing, they could not escape the scrutiny and scandals of the Backpage.
As a student Cooper witnessed the Thresher backpage’s transformation from a depository of gossip and overheard quips to more biting, personal satire.
“It became hardcore parody, almost sort of cruel,” Cooper said, “hitting the bounds of what’s OK and what’s not OK and what’s legal and what’s not legal.”
The backpage’s satire officially went too far in the late 90s, when multiple scandals caused students and faculty to press for Student Association control over its content. According to a 1994 letter from the SA Parliamentarian to the Dean for Student Affairs, the SA Constitution, at the time, stated “that the Student Association Senate may dictate specific editorial policy by legislation to any student publication”
“It is our understanding that the Student Association has the authority to guide and direct editorial policy for the Thresher,” read a 1996 letter to the Student Association president signed by over 30 Rice staff. “[We recommend that the SA] propose legislation that would ensure an editorial policy congruent with Rice University’s non-discrimination policy.”
The letter was reacting to a particularly tasteless backpage story titled, “Rice Women are Like…” that attacked the desirability of Rice women.
Student and staff relations with the Thresher only worsened the following year, when the Trasher, the Thresher’s annual satirical paper, released an article claiming a female student had been featured in Hustler magazine due to her sexual prowess. The Trasher attempted to parody Allison Fine’s (Hanszen ‘97) actual appearance in Glamour magazine.
Fine argued that the parody, which did not use her real name, was retaliation against her organizing an open forum in response to the aforementioned misogynistic Backpage. She filed a formal complaint of defamation and harassment against Thresher editors Martha Beard (Brown ’98) and Vivek Rao (Baker ’97).
The disciplinary process did not go smoothly — disciplinary letters were sent to other Thresher members and then revoked, and, in one instance, sent to the wrong student, according to Cooper.
“There was some back-and-forth, she got upset, and basically filed a student code of conduct charge against Vivek [Rao] and Marty [Beard],” C. Klein said. “They went through a hearing, there were a lot of procedural issues, a lot of mistakes made on the administration's part in the way they handled that situation.”
Both Beard and Rao were sentenced to 100 hours of community service. Beard managed to defer her original suspension punishment by circulating a letter of apology and agreeing to serve on a committee to examine the responsibilities of the paper, as well as its financial and legal ties to the university.
Her letter of apology, which circulated 3,060 copies, also offered suggestions to avoid similar issues. However, the letter’s mandated distribution violated the confidentiality that governs student disciplinary affairs, as it made Beard and Rao’s punishment and trial public.
“In the end, there were some nominal punishments but it ultimately went away,” C. Klein said.
Even though the Thresher dealt with the repercussions of the Trasher issue, most of the controversy was limited to the involved parties due to the wide amount of “political infighting,” fueled by some of the SA, according to C. Klein.
“I think most people took it as this is the Trasher. It’s an April Fools issue,” C. Klein said. “It’s protected by the law, and it’s really not that big a deal.”
In response to the editorial staff feeling that their editorial freedoms were being threatened, they printed a blank issue on September 12, 1997 with only advertisements, an editorial, and the text of the first amendment.
An ad hoc advisory committee to examine the relationship of the Thresher to the Rice Community emerged out of the Trasher debacle. Cooper emphasized that Rice was never looking to disband the Thresher in any way, but looking for a way to manage the liability.
“That committee went nowhere,” Cooper said. “What the university was really exploring [was], is there a way that we can separate the Thresher for legal purposes?”
In the fall of 1997, as the Thresher recovered from the Trasher backlash, Cooper assumed the newly created role of Student Media Advisor to oversee the Thresher and help manage the Campanile’s finances. Even though many perceived this as the administration’s response to the scandal, the job had been created a year beforehand.
“There was a general movement to try to bring somebody in as a support person,” said C. Klein, who was editor in chief during the search for a student media advisor. “Not as [a] controlling person or someone to do prior review or anything like, that but really as an institutional knowledge support person.”
As soon as Cooper arrived and began dealing with the remaining Trasher backlash, the November 21, 1997 issue ran an advertisement from the Committee for Open Debate on the Holocaust (CODOH) that questioned the existence of the Holocaust.
According to an email sent by Brian Stoler (Hanszen ‘01), who would become editor in chief the following year, the Thresher apologized for the ad and attempted to donate money to the Houston Holocaust Museum, who refused it. Then, the Holocaust museum and the Anti-Defamation League gave Stoler approximately $3,000 to attend a two-week trip to Poland and Israel. Months later, Stoler wrote a column about his trip, submitted it to a contest and won a $1000 prize.
Many staff members left as fallout from the Trasher and CODOH ad controversies, which allowed a new wave of Thresher staffers to breath life into the paper.
“The good thing that came out of that was, spring of ‘98, all of these freshmen coming into the Thresher and starting fresh,” Cooper said.
The next controversy did not revolve around the Thresher itself, but rather the news it reported. In the November 6, 1998 issue, the Thresher broke the news that the SA President, Bill Van Vooren (Baker’ 99), was academically ineligible to hold the title. Even as Van Vooren threatened to “pursue disciplinary action if any privileged information is released,” in a letter to Stoler, who was then editing the paper, the Thresher published the story and wrote an editorial calling for his resignation. Van Vooren was ultimately allowed to retain his position.
In her first years as advisor, Cooper said that she focused on establishing processes and systems that would allow the paper to better manage controversy. Without interfering in any editorial content, she encouraged students to “use her as a sounding board.”
Also during this time, the Thresher began participating in national competitions and conventions. As they received awards and implemented these new processes, the paper was better prepared to deal with upcoming controversy with newfound prestige and stability.
In the March 15, 2002 issue, the Thresher backpage printed a misclassified containing a sexually explicit quote about the wife of then-President Malcolm Gillis. In an email from from Gillis to the speaker of the Faculty Council, Bob Patten, Gillis claims that the backpage went “far beyond any standard of decency even in a campus community, constituting an invasion of privacy of one who would never expect to be so abused in public: my partner of 40 years.”
Gillis was concerned about the potential liability of the university, especially because he believed that bringing forth litigation could be financially detrimental to the university.
“We narrowly escaped such a suit in the Allison Fine matter five years ago,” Gillis’ email read. “One of these days we will be called to account for the actions of our agents, in this case a student newspaper.”
However, less than three years prior, the university had formally restated its separation from the Thresher in a letter from Vice President for Student Affairs Zenaido Camacho to the editors at the time. The Thresher is “a separate and autonomous operation, free from Rice’s editorial control,” read the letter, according to the October 8, 1999 Thresher. “The University desires that The Rice Thresher function as a separate and autonomous entity ... Therefore, the editors and writers of the Thresher, and not Rice, are legally responsible for its contents in the event of any litigation.”
In response to the Gillis misclassified, the university formed yet another committee to examine “the relationship of the Thresher to the Rice community.” From this, came a more clear definition of the peculiar Thresher-to-University relationship that is essentially editorial but not financial freedom.
From the ashes of controversies, a better managed and more trusted Thresher was born. Through the late 1990s, the Thresher began winning awards from the Associated College Press and other student media review boards. Slowly earning back the trust of Rice’s faculty and student body, the Thresher has continued reporting on the university through the new millennium.
The Thresher has continually evolved to represent the undergraduate perspective on campus events. There have been hiccups in maintaining this mission, but the Thresher has learned from those hiccups, as it will learn from future hiccups treading a tightrope of autonomy within the University, keeping it in check and advocating for change in hopes to improve student life at Rice.
