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Much like last summer, students returning this fall may be surprised to see new green fences on campus. Facilities, Engineering & Planning Communications Director Susann Glenn, however, hopes students will be more impressed by the progress FE&P has made with its construction projects.
Though Houston may be a good city for concerts, multi-ethnic cuisine and shopping, it is not for cheap energy. At the end of fiscal year 2007-'08, which ended in June, Rice's total energy costs rose $4 million, from $12 million to $16 million. Director of Sustainability Richard Johnson (Will Rice '92) said this jump is attributed to the rising costs of energy and not to increased consumption. For students, this jump in energy prices may show up in future on-campus housing costs, Johnson said.Energy includes electricity; chilled water, for air conditioning; and steam, for heat, which service most of the buildings on campus. Johnson said Rice is not using any more energy per square foot than it has in the past, though due to the rising energy costs the school is under more pressure to reduce its energy consumption.
While students and faculty may have been taking a break for the summer holidays, it appears internet scammers have been hard at work. Since February, there have been 14 rounds of phishing attacks, which led to a massive Rice e-mail blacklisting from several major e-mail providers this summer. An estimated 12 students, faculty and staff this summer volunteered their personal e-mail information to the fraudulent requests.Phishing, which can happen not only through e-mail but also via telephone, is the act of attempting to get a person's personal information. By obtaining a person's password and user identification to a university e-mail account via phishing attacks, scammers can access that account and can use it to send fraudulent messages to other e-mail services. Because many e-mail providers have relatively strict spam filters, scammers look for university webmail e-mail addresses, which are seen as legitimate, Information Technology Security Officer Marc Scarborough said. This way, scammers can send more e-mails through these accounts and increase their chances of getting money from their message recipients.
For this election year, political fervor may have gripped many students on campus who look into donating money to fund their favored candidate's election. But Dr. Joan Mandle, president of Democracy Matters, an organization devoted to campaign financing that has 70 chapters in college campuses across the United States, claims these donations may not make a difference for many politicians, who mainly answer to corporate interests and the privileged elite. Mandle, a professor at Colgate University, spoke April 21 in the Miner Lounge of the Rice Memorial Center.Mandle began her talk, entitled "White House for Sale? Do Students Really Have a Voice?" by acknowledging former Student Association President Laura Kelley with arranging for her to come to Rice. Kelley, a Brown College senior, began her internship with Democracy Matters earlier this semester. Mandle said students in the internship focus on reaching out to other students and enacting political change on their college campuses.
Those who were hoping next year's common reading would be the timely political memoir by Allen Raymond, How to Rig an Election: Confessions of a Republican Operative, may have to wait until the 2012 presidential election. This month the common reading committee reached a decision, selecting Greg Mortenson's memoir, Three Cups of Tea: One Man's Mission to Promote Peace … One School at a Time, which they have since distributed to Orientation Week coordinators, advisers, resident associates, college counselors and next year's incoming class.The common reading committee met before winter recess and periodically throughout the spring, and is made up of undergraduate students, including former O-Week coordinators, a faculty member, a graduate student and Assistant to the President Matthew Taylor.
The rising costs of fuel on the international market may seem more than a slight annoyance when shelling out $3.50 per gallon of gasoline, but a group of Rice students experienced the global effects firsthand when they had to cancel a trip to Central America. The team, comprised of seven students from Rice's chapter of Engineers Without Borders, had to cancel their Nicaragua trip which was scheduled to start last Monday, because of transportation strikes in the country that have recently escalated in violence.EWB Project Leaders Matt Wesley and Amy Liu directed the team, which had chosen Nicaragua for its service project last December. Wesley, a Baker College sophomore, said the team planned to construct a system to deliver fresh water to inhabitants of the area, which is two kilometers from the Costa Rican border. EWB projects involve several stages: Background research of the area; gathering data; implementation, when members construct and complete the project and a post assessment, when members will evaluate their project. Wesley said these projects take four different trips to the area to complete, and implementation alone often demands multiple trips.
The April 12, 1988 turning of Willy's statue has become the stuff of Rice legend, and every good campus tour guide will mention the famous prank when showing prospective students through the academic quad. Like every legend, however, the specifics remained unclear, and the questions of who was behind the prank and how they did it remained unanswered. But last Friday, on the 20th anniversary of the prank, a group of 11 Rice alumni involved in the turning of Willy's statue returned to campus for the screening of the new documentary 180 -- The Spin on Willy's Statue, ready to explain everything and to unveil their plans for a $180,000 engineering fund.The FOX 6 news reporter who was assigned to cover the story had also attended Rice when the prank occurred and, in a recurring pattern, Houston Chronicle reporter Lisa Gray (Brown '88) was also at Rice at the time, and had covered the story for the Thresher.
Harvard may have the H Bomb and Cornell may boast the SMUT, but next Friday, Rice will join their ranks with Open, its first sex magazine. Editor in chief Rachel Solnick plans to distribute the 68-page black-and-white magazine's 1,500 copies to Rice and the surrounding Houston community.The magazine is composed of seven sections: Perspectives, which features individuals speaking as part of a group; editorials; articles, which cover news and historical events; short stories; poetry; the post-secret section, from campus-distributed postcards which garnered student input; and the results of an online sex survey from earlier this semester, which received over 800 responses.
Starting next fall, students and faculty may at last be happy to find something missing at Rice - the RDA Personal Identification Number previously needed to register for courses. After presenting his plan to the Faculty Senate at its March 12 meeting, Director of Academic Advising Brian Gibson found himself with an 83 percent approval rating to abolish the RDA PIN process, which has existed since 2003.Currently, students must visit an academic advisor to receive the PIN needed for registration. Gibson said this system will stay in place for the fall 2008 registration which begins April 7, but starting with next year's incoming freshmen, the PIN will be dropped. Gibson said students will instead be encouraged, though not required, to visit academic advisors for course guidance. He said the removal of the PIN will improve upon the current faculty advising system because over the years, many students have visited academic advisors to gain their PIN rather than to ask for academic advice.
On Tuesday, the Commencement Speaker Committee announced former Rice president George Rupp will be the speaker for commencement 2008. Committee chair Michael Gustin said Rupp, who serves as CEO and president of the International Relief Program, seemed a logical choice for speaker because of his ties to Rice and the larger global community.Gustin said since the committee was formed late last semester, this pushed the process off and led to the late announcement of the commencement speaker.
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Seniors who dreamed that their last semester of college would be filled with constant parties, easy classes and the occasional contemplation of their future may have to adjust that fantasy this year due to accreditation assessments, which began last week. Though Rice was reaffirmed for accreditation in 2006 - all colleges and universities are evaluated every ten years for the title - due to new measures by the federal government, universities across the country are undergoing an examination process to test what seniors have learned in their time at college.
Although spring break may have allowed students a relaxing respite from school, Willy Week, which began Monday, more than made up for the previous week's lack of activity. Mock Beer-Bike, the Beer Debates and Willy's Picnic may have enhanced the Willy Week experience, but colleges were the real stars of Willy Week with the many jacks they executed across campus.Late Sunday night, members of Martel College sprayed WD-40 in trashcans filled with water balloons at Brown College to pop the balloons.
