Features

“Untold histories” get told in this year’s Rice Historical Review

Last semester, when McMurtry College senior Joy Wang was researching the bubonic plague in medieval Spain, she started by looking for cross-century comparisons and insight into how people experienced and moved on from a pandemic. According to Wang, she found parallels between the attacks on the Jewish community during the Black Death and xenophobia and hate toward the Asian and Asian-American community during the COVID-19 pandemic. 

Student authors: Rice students talk writing and publishing books

While most Rice students have written at least a handful of essays and papers, few have written entire books — and gotten them published. The Thresher spoke with four student authors about their writing and publishing processes. 

‘Love doctors’: Rice Missed Connections plays matchmaker for students

“To the guy on the 2nd floor at Brown, you’re cute but I’m too scared to talk to you.” “To the hot shawty in Duncan 5th floor, u can ride me over when u do ur beer bike practice.” “To the guy who emerged from fondy wearing a blue&red flannel w Addidas sweatpants - u single?” These are just a sample of the student submissions featured on Rice Missed Connections, an Instagram account that gives students a platform to shoot their shot anonymously with other students. 

Senior Spotlight: Maddy Scannell talks debate and finding balance

Maddy Scannell first started debating her freshman year of high school, almost eight years ago. Just last month, as a member of Rice’s debate team, the Martel College senior reached the quarterfinals in the National Parliamentary Debate Association 2021 Championship Tournament.

4-14-21 Crossword #2: "Ssssss"

4-14-21 Crossword #1: "Dishwasher"

Black at Rice: Edesiri Mushale discusses mechanical engineering and passion for people

When Edesiri Mushale was in high school, he thought he wanted to be a doctor.  “My mom is a nurse and I really liked helping people,” Mushale, a McMurtry College senior, said. “I didn’t really realize how long the process [of becoming a doctor] was going to be.”  However, his experiences on various robotics teams led him to change his interests. Mushale first joined the robotics team in the seventh grade; in high school, he continued with the activity and joined a larger team. 

4-7-21 Crossword #2: "Take an L"

4-7-21 Crossword #1: "Cinematic"

Beer Bike 2021 themes, predictions, and pictures

Postdoctoral fellow Alex Jong-Seok Lee navigates race, racism and identity in Asia

When postdoctoral fellow Alex Jong-Seok Lee conceptualized his course in Asian Studies last fall, he went back and thought about previous conversations with students about the kinds of courses they would be interested in. Although there are several courses in Asian American Studies at Rice that focus on ethnicity, health, class and gender, students had brought up one issue that wasn't covered in-depth: race in Asia. 

Doc Talks: Task Force on Racial Injustice talks documents and research in webinar series

Fifty-six years ago, just as Rice University began to desegregate, student Raymond L. Johnson wrote a remarkable letter to the university’s president. Johnson was the first Black student to enroll at Rice, and his presence sparked a lawsuit by alumni demanding that Rice only educate white students. School officials requested that Johnson and other Black students keep a low profile and stay out of the media during the lawsuit, but Johnson’s letter to the president brought the painfully slow progress of integration under light — and questioned the dubious timing of introducing tuition the same year Rice began accepting Black students. This letter is just one of many documents discussed in The Task Force on Slavery, Segregation and Racial Injustice’s new podcast and webinar series.  

3-31-21 Crossword #2: "Matryoshka Dolls"

3-31-21 Crossword #1: "End of the Day"

21 different websites to spice up your study breaks

The internet is a wonderful and weird place. And since, especially now, we’re forced to spend almost the entirety of our day online, why not use the internet for ways to take new and creative study breaks? Here is a list of websites that can help you feel better while studying or while taking a break from it. 

From farming to designing vaccines, alum Barney Graham solves problems

Last week, hundreds of Rice community members received the second dose of the Moderna COVID-19 vaccine following the spontaneous vaccine clinic during the February winter storm. Few may have known that a Rice alumnus, Barney Graham (Will Rice College ’75), was the mastermind behind the vaccine’s messenger RNA sequence entering their cells.

A year into the pandemic, research goes on — but not without changes

sAfter doing a computational chemistry project remotely while campus access was limited last summer, Will Rice College junior Hallie Trial returned to campus lab work in August. At the Ball Lab, where she investigates the synthesis of boronic acids and water, Trial is masked, physically distanced from fellow researchers and, sometimes, reusing gloves — a practice not normally recommended, she said, but necessitated by pandemic shortages of personal protective equipment.

Senior Spotlight: Nitin Srinivasan combines passions for music and medicine

When Nitin Srinivasan began his first semester at Rice, he knew that he was interested in medicine. Beyond that, the Hanszen College senior didn’t know what exactly he wanted to pursue. It was during that first semester of freshman year that Srinivasan determined what direction he wanted to take his interest: the world of psychology.

Crossword #1: "Medical Instruments"

‘We all feel scared and vulnerable’: Asian members of Rice community respond to anti-Asian violence

Over the last year, racist violence and hate crimes against Asians have spiked sharply, with Asian American women bearing the brunt of them. Last week’s Atlanta-area spa shootings of eight people, mostly Asian women, by a white man, was a horrific incident in a long line of hate crimes against the Asian community in the United States and beyond.