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In the March 19 issue, the Thresher reported in the article "Casino party security pays off" that undercover Houston Police Department officers made an appearance at Lovett's Casino Party. The officers in attendance were actually representing the Texas Alcohol and Beverage Commission. The Thresher regrets the error.
This Saturday, more than 60 students attended a healthcare debate hosted by the Baker Institute Student Forum and Rice Young Democrats at Hanszen College (see story, page 1). Sure, the food may have played a part - serveries were closed, and the event promised Vietnamese sandwiches and tacos. But the food ran out in the first few minutes, and students remained to listen to Democratic and Republican students debate the relative merits and issues of healthcare reform.We at the Thresher are pleased. Not necessarily because the Tacos a Go Go proved the event to be a success - those wandering in the Hanszen Commons just two minutes after the debate began were too late for the food - but because of the implications of this attendance. Sure, serveries were closed, and the food was a step above what most might purchase on campus on Saturday evening, but more than 60 students remained for the final vote at the end of the debate, which showed a fairly even bipartisan split. For a campus that must alert, and almost force, its students to attend alumna and Houston Mayor Annise Parker's (Jones '78) Rice speech by delaying servery dinner, getting this many students to show up to a student debate is especially noteworthy.
We are pleased with Rice's selection of Rick Greenspan as athletic director, following Chris Del Conte's departure for Texas Christian University in October (see story, page 1). Greenspan has some large shoes to fill: Under Del Conte's tenure, Rice saw the opening of Tudor Fieldhouse, the renovation of Reckling Park, three consecutive Conference USA championships for the women's track and field team and back-to-back bowl appearances by the football team, just to touch on a few of Rice athletics' accomplishments in the past three years.However, we are confident that Greenspan will rise to the challenge and continue to take Rice athletics in the direction that Del Conte started. With experience at big conference schools that also do not put a main priority on football, such as Indiana University, Greenspan is the perfect fit for Rice athletics, especially when facing potential team conference reassignments. Also, we are happy to hear that Greenspan is planning to increase student involvement even more so than Del Conte did, and we are hoping that the recently established Varsity Sports Liaison program in the residential colleges has an opportunity to flourish under his purview, to encourage students to support teams other than their college's bike and chug teams.
And so begins the event that needs no introduction. Maybe the alumni wandering back to campus have tipped you off, or maybe the abnormally copious amounts of free booze have alerted you to this weekend's festivities. Regardless, tomorrow begins the most sacred tradition in Rice history: chugging, biking, chanting college cheers.So we'd like to be responsible for a minute and just remind you a) to wear sunscreen, and b) to not be stupid. The former should be simple enough: You can even get sunburned on overcast days, and according to the latest weather reports, it looks like Saturday will be rainy. The latter, however, we cannot stress enough. This semester alone has seen its share of Beer Bike parade debates, and we'd be overjoyed to see this year's parade and races go off without a hitch. So control yourself. Have fun, but if you can tell, even in a drunken stupor, that what you're doing is a bad idea, don't do it. It's (probably) not worth maiming yourself to earn the respect of that tattooed hottie.
In the article "Non-major Humanities courses cut" in the Feb. 26 issue, the Thresher reported that all Humanities courses not directly related to a major would be cut next year. Instead, just two pre-professional journalism courses, HUMA 250: Writing for Print Media and HUMA 251: Typography and Design, will be cut. No other courses are slated to be cut at this time. In the article "Tuition rises 5 percent due to endowment losses" in the Feb. 26 issue, the Thresher reported the total for tuition, fees and room and board for 2010-11 would increase to $48,500. Tuition will actually only increase to $45,500, which is $3,000 less than the Thresher reported.
It's that time of year again: Some staffers are stepping out, and new ones are stepping in, contributing to a vastly different office environment. We'd like to look back on this year and offer our thanks to the following seniors for their dedication:Casey Michel, our outgoing editor in chief, led us through countless late nights with his mellow attitude and refusal to nap - instead, fearlessly preferring to power through the night with countless cans of Red Bull. He helped bring the Web site into the 21st century by expanding our multimedia efforts and helped push the Thresher into the Twittersphere.
Rice may be an arboretum, but an art museum it is not. So we were pleased to hear of the university's successful bid to host sculptor James Surls' bronze and steel work through the end of August (see story, pg. 1). Rice secured the sculptures over several Houston parks and promenades, and the works, which were previously exhibited on New York's Park Avenue, are scattered across campus. In light of next week's events, our first question has to be: Are these sculptures jackable? But, Willy Week aside, we see this as a positive addition to our campus that does not destroy the ambiance. Our only beef with the sculptures has to do with their aesthetic appeal. The works are divisive, and in fact, many on our staff consider them downright ugly, which is why we are also relieved this is a temporary exhibit. However, when push comes to shove, we hope this signals the beginning of a trend to bring more art to campus and to appreciate structures beyond the construction of the next mega-college. We hope Rice will strengthen its ties with the Houston art scene - a large, talented community - and look into bringing more traveling exhibits to campus. What better way to connect with the surrounding community?
Rice recently announced that it is perpetuating a disheartening trend in tuition hikes, increasing undergraduate tuition by 5.4 percent for the 2010-11 school year to reach a whopping $33,120 (see story, page 1). This continues the university's decades-old pattern of steadily increasing tuition year after year, often without regard to the national economic picture or external considerations of its students. In the past 10 years alone, the increases have combined to entail more than a doubling of undergraduate tuition. The latest increase is, frankly, insensitive. The administration has spent the past year preaching about the difficult economic situation in justification of multiple budget cuts. Since the fall of 2008, we have endured cuts in academic departments, budget reductions in the residential colleges, staff-wide hiring freezes, the non-renewal of contracts and the elimination of many courses. Times are hard, we're told, so we simply must learn to do without luxuries such as newspapers and college courses taught by professionals.
Though Duncan College and McMurtry College have made large strides in their paths to becoming full-fledged residential colleges, they are still facing an enormous setback: Both of the colleges still do not have enough transfer students from Baker College, Brown College, Hanszen College and Wiess College to fully subsist. To rectify this, all freshmen from these colleges have received invitations to transfer (see story, page 1). Though we are happy that Baker freshmen now have an opportunity to transfer and remain with their Duncan friends, we are disappointed that the university underestimated college loyalty when planning the transfer process. As a result, Duncan and McMurtry will face more challenges in the future: Both colleges will now have an incredibly large class of 2013, in addition to their disproportionate upperclassmen classes and larger classes in future years.
After weeks of preparation by candidates and referendum representatives, Student Association General Elections began at 11:59 p.m. last night, and will be open until Wednesday, Feb. 24, at 2 p.m. Voting is open at sa.rice.edu and all candidates can be found in this year's Student Elections pull-out, beginning on page 11. For the three blanket tax proposals, the Thresher makes the following recommendations:-By-Law Amendment #2009.01 - KTRU Blanket Tax increase
In last week's article on college budget cuts ("College course budgets face cuts," Feb.5), the Thresher reported that college courses began two years ago. Student-taught courses began two years ago, whereas college courses have been around for more than ten years. The Thresher also reported that college course budgets were cut after some colleges did not use up their college course budget. However, the colleges were spending their entire course budget on courses taught by professional instructors, and the decision to cut the college course budget was based on an expression of support for, and confidence in, the continued growth and impact of the student-taught course program. The Thresher regrets these errors.
As group invitations supporting particular Student Association candidates begin to clog our revamped Facebook feeds this week, we realize another SA election is rapidly approaching. When looking to the future of the SA and the university as a whole this time of year, the Thresher has begun a tradition of evaluating the SA's actions over the previous year, offering suggestions to the presidential candidates as they plan not only for their campaigns but also their future terms.Brown College junior Tiffany Wu and Martel College junior Selim Sheikh have begun campaigns for the position of SA president for the majority of the 2010-11 school year. One of them will take on the position at a relatively good time for the SA, as the association has evolved from the "rubber-stamp" institution that we admonished three years ago into the student forum for discussion and movement that it was intended to be ("SA needs its own Vision," Feb. 23, 2007).
On Monday, the proposed changes to this year's Beer Bike parade were put to a vote to the college coordinators, who proceeded to veto the proposal (see story, page 1). We commend the college coordinators for reflecting the majority student opinion, illustrated in the recent Student Association poll, and for supporting the continuation of the original parade format. We thank all the Beer Bike coordinators for listening to the student voice. While on the subject of voting, we feel that in the future, it would be prudent to elect campus-wide Beer Bike coordinators rather than appointing them, in order to avoid a distinct disconnect between the campus-wide coordinators and the rest of the student body like the one which arose this year.
The Office of the Dean of Undergraduates has announced that college course budgets will be cut in accordance with next school year's university-wide 5 percent budget cuts (see story, page 1). In what was once a budget flush with $5,000 allotted per college, the college course funds were hacked to $3,000 this year, and will plummet to a proposed $250 next year. It is the university's expectation that students will come to the courses' rescue by opting to fund college courses from their general college budgets. While we understand the need to cut costs in an economy as tepid as this, we are perplexed by the current trend of dumping intellectually invigorating Rice traditions in lieu of other means. For instance, it was just a year ago that we had local and national newspapers scattered on our commons' tables. But due to budget constraints, they are no more. And it now appears that college courses, student-taught or otherwise, are on a similar path, which is both disturbing and disappointing.
The administration has decided to postpone a final decisionregarding the potential installation of granite rings around Willy's statue in the academic quad to commemorate donors giving at least $4.6 million - the amount which William
Despite the Vision for the Second Century's plan to continually improve all aspects of the Rice experience, the newly released rankings from The Princeton Review hint that the opposite is happening (see story, page 1). Rice, while still ranked first in "quality of life," has gradually slipped in "best value" and now sits in seventh place behind a mix of small East Coast liberal arts schools and Ivy League powerhouses. While Rice is still in the top 10, we cannot be satisfied with continual downgrades. In the past, Rice sold itself on its "best value" reputation, with need-blind admission and an increasing no-loan income threshold. However, other schools have caught on to the needs of today's college students and their families, and are now leaving Rice in the dust with even more generous financial aid policies. Has the V2C pushed the university too far?
Many students' first experiences at Rice consist of overnight visits as prospective students. The tradition lives on, even if over the past few years the names, dates and frequency of Rice's annual official prospective student visits have changed - from Owl Weekend to Owl Days to now Owl Days and Admit Days - to accommodate the growing class sizes (see story, page 1). Despite these changes, the idea has remained basically the same: Allow prospective students, who have already been admitted to Rice and are whittling down their final college choices before the May commit deadline, to stay on campus with a student host, sit in on classes of their choice and experience Rice culture as a whole. Unfortunately, the proposed dates for this year's Owl Days and Admit Days, sandwiching the last week of classes, threaten to undermine more than one Rice tradition. Admit Days' occurrence on the last day of classes, which is coincidentally College Night for both Hanszen College and Wiess College, guarantees that parents and prospective students alike will be eyewitnesses to some of the most widespread drunken antics on Rice's campus this side of Beer Bike. While the administration would like to flaunt Rice's social sphere along with its academics, this is not the angle to take - and one that seems almost antithetical to the administration's attempts to sweep all things Beer Bike-related (i.e., intoxicated and crazed) under the rug. The large majority of parents and prospective students will undoubtedly be perturbed by costumes and drinking games in the backs of classes; in turn, the Rice University Police Department will be keen on cracking down on underage drinking, which we fear will temper the merriment of certain revelers. Additionally, students interested in sitting in on a class or two will be shortchanged: Most classes on the last day will consist of exams, and those that don't will be dominated by drunken antics. And we're not even going to touch on the awkwardness of prospective students coming during the first day of dead period, when no classes are even in session.
Last week's column by Patrick McAnaney read thatCatholic Charities in Washington, D.C. would cut off all services to the homeless if legislation legalizing same-sex marriage passed ("Catholic Church abandons social services for homeless," Jan. 15). Washington Archbishop Donald Wuerl said that only some services would be cut off if the legislation passed. The Thresher regrets the error.
You know how it is. Rice may boast legions of high IQs, but when it comes to politics or international causes, we just can't be bothered.So perhaps it speaks to the magnitude of the tragic Haitian earthquake that shook the world last week, but Rice students have been showing considerable support; even, might we add, a surprising lack of apathy (see story, page 1). In the first two days of their campaign, the Office of International Students and the Rice Student Volunteer Program raised more than $800, thanks to individual donations and funds from an anonymous donor who pledged $1 for each person who participated in the fundraiser. Duncan College also raised $1,000 for the Red Cross, and Wiess College organized a lunchtime fundraiser benefiting Project Medishare. We are truly impressed by the Rice community's charitable efforts; this time, political activism transcended Facebook status updates.
Was there a basketball game last weekend? You tell us. Autry Army successfully enticed approximately 550 students - effectively one-sixth the size of the undergraduate population - to attend the Rice men's contest against the University of Memphis (see story, page 11). With an intact support system, the Owls nearly emerged victorious, and students enjoyed cheap pizza and the thrill of a successful athletic event.Considering typical student attendance at athletic events is abysmal, attracting hundreds of students for Saturday's game sounds spectacular. But what was the cost of the record attendance? Autry Army shelled out $900 for pizza and provided hundreds of free t-shirts to students. Given students' free admission to the game, the athletic department made no profit off the stellar attendance; instead, Autry Army went into the red with these expenses. And given the exponential increase in attendance - we estimate an average home basketball game sees 20 students - we can only assume it is a result of the effort Autry Army put forth. Taking into consideration the fact that college serveries are closed for Saturday dinner, this may have been a primary motivation for students to go to the game. After all, paying $1 per pizza slice results in a cheaper dinner than those available beyond the hedges. So then, why not stay close to one's college and partake in a cheap meal, even if it means going to a basketball game? Several students may have attended the game purely out of convenience rather than a desire to bleed blue and gray.
