Opinion

Let’s show our gratitude for campus staff

“If Seibel serves PAOW one more time, I’m dropping out.” It’s all too common for Rice students to gripe about the food and facilities. I know I’ve been guilty of it. In my experience, complaining sometimes becomes an easy bonding opportunity amongst students: lulls in the conversation are frequently filled with hyperbolic jokes about food at North being inedible or about dorms the size of shoeboxes. I don’t want to dismiss the legitimate difficulties that students with dietary restrictions or accessibility needs face at Rice. However, the majority of complaints I hear seem to come from students who expect luxury but overlook the employees who work so hard to provide for our every need. Rice’s campus staff is incredible and I urge us all to show them more respect and gratitude.

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.

New semester offers new beginnings for students, admin

Every August, as Orientation Week wraps up and the fall semester begins, it feels as if the campus is rejuvenated with new life. That feeling is especially prevalent for students this time around, as this is the first semester to start with fully in-person classes since January of 2020. But what many students might not realize is that this year is also a fresh start administratively. In addition to welcoming a new president, Rice announced the hiring of five new vice presidents and a new provost. 

Let’s progress together

This is my first column for the Thresher as Rice’s new president, and the opportunity fills me with a sense of awe and gratitude. Rice is a remarkable institution of higher education, and I am honored to lead and serve our community.

The Wellbeing Center should be transparent about its true confidentiality policies

Before you attend a counseling session at the Rice counseling center, you will be told that “the RCC maintains strict standards regarding privacy.” You will find statements from the university that your mental health record will not be shared with anyone outside of extreme situations of imminent harm, and only then that your information will be shared with only the necessary officials. This sounds great, except that these assurances bear no teeth whatsoever — no enforcement agency ensures that Rice follows its public confidentiality promises, and there are no penalties for Rice if they break them. The Wellbeing and Counseling Centers should more directly communicate the limits of their confidentiality policies when compared to unaffiliated counseling centers, and students in sensitive situations should take the necessary precautions to protect their information.

We’re in student media to learn

This week marks the last issue of the Thresher for the year, and for the seniors like myself, our last issue ever. I have been a part of the Thresher since freshman year. And it would not be an exaggeration to say it has defined my Rice experience. As someone pursuing a career in journalism after graduation, there has been no better place to learn than at this paper.

Philanthropy doesn’t excuse slavery

In January, the Rice Board of Trustees announced plans to move the Founder’s memorial to another area of the academic quad as part of a whole redesign, adding additional context of his “entanglement” with slavery. This comes despite continual calls from the student body to not have the enslaver displayed in the quad regardless of the context provided. It would be just for these calls to action and the majority of the Task Force Committee who voted to not keep it there that the Board of Trustees decide to not keep the memorial prominently displayed in the quad at all.

Don’t let college culture die

Last year, the Board of Trustees announced that Rice would be increasing the undergraduate class size 20 percent — nearly 800 more students — by 2025. The quick rollout of this decision has left current students with a fracturing academic and social experience. Going forward, the administration needs to better plan for maintaining the small school benefits and residential college culture.

Rice must reconsider its partnership with Aramco

On March 21 in a recent press release, Rice University enthusiastically announced it had approved a five-year, $10 million bid for Saudi Arabian Oil Company’s (Aramco) involvement in Carbon Hub, a university-led research initiative committed to accelerating the energy transition toward sustainable hydrocarbons. In this same announcement, Rice’s Matteo Pasquali, a chemical engineer who directs Carbon Hub, construed the development in a positive manner, expressing his unequivocal excitement to “welcome the Aramco group” as “great partners” for facilitating a more sustainable future. 

COVID outbreak could have been mitigated with proactive testing

On Dec. 26 of last year, President David Leebron and future president Reginald DesRoches sent an email to the Rice community regarding plans for this spring semester. The email proclaimed that Rice had “entered a new and different phase of the pandemic.” Specifically, the email stated that the university would “begin to shift our policies to a posture that recognizes COVID-19 as endemic and facilitates our ability to deliver the best education and opportunity to our students, while still taking reasonable precautions.” 

4-6-2022 Editorial Cartoon

Beer Bike Coordinators – Thank you for Beer Bike

After three years and much anticipation, we finally had a normal Beer Bike. None of the past week’s events could have been possible without the hard work of every Beer Bike coordinator, bike captain, chug captain and every student, staff and alumni who played a role in making Beer Bike 2022 the spectacular event it was.

War in Ukraine: Blame America’s oligarchs as well as Russian counterparts

While life at Rice seems to return to normal, we must all comprehend that Russian President Vladimir Putin has unleashed hell on Ukraine. Countries including the United States are sanctioning Russia's oligarchs, whose concentration of immense wealth suffices to fund Putin’s war. But those rich Russian terrorists have not acted alone. Decades of wrongdoing by America’s oligarchs, due to our failure to control their greed and power, have also enabled Putin’s present holocaust in Ukraine. 

Unclear election rules hurt everyone

As it stands under the Student Association election rules, candidates are not allowed to send mass campaign emails, and included in this rule is anyone campaigning on behalf of the candidate. During this year’s SA presidential race, Rice PRIDE endorsed candidate Gabby Franklin, a choice they then shared with their members via an opt-in Listserv. This is now the subject of the recent complaint by former Will Rice College senator William Tsai who claims that the endorsement email was a violation of SA election rules. The case will be brought to University Court this upcoming Thursday, March 31.

Letter to the Editor: On fairness and trans-inclusivity in athletics

On Feb. 2, 2022, the Thresher published an opinion advocating for Seth Huston to undergo allyship training in response to his comments on trans-women’s participation in women’s sports. While I whole-heartedly endorse several of the authors’ key claims — such as their opposition to House Bill 25 — their interpretation of evidence regarding the effects of hormone therapy on trans-athletes lacks appropriate context, serving as a reminder to critically evaluate evidence in politically fraught discourse.   

Culture of Care requires constant effort from each of us

A one sentence definition of the Culture of Care is impossible to create. Three years ago, it was embodied through building relationships with Housing and Dining workers, walking someone home from a party at 2 a.m. or inviting someone new to join you for lunch. 

Breaks aren’t breaks if there’s a test the next day

Here at the Thresher, we, like most students on campus, like to complain about academic accommodations. Still, we feel the need to bring it back up because some issues persist. Issues that, if we’re being honest, seem easily addressable, especially in this time of constantly-shifting campus norms. We’re talking about professors scheduling exams the week after, and sometimes in the days immediately following, spring break.

Stand up for free speech now, or it’s only going to get more difficult

This article is not written for the students who put forth and are pushing the SA resolution to denounce Seth Huston’s statements. This article is written for the liberals, the students who don’t engage with the SA or are too afraid to speak up. This is it. Speak now or forever hold your peace.

Ensure student representation at Rice: Enforce the vote

I believe that at the heart of a thoughtful opinion piece lies an acknowledgment of its author’s blindness and that no opinion piece, especially those penned by cis white men, will ever wholistically convey a sociological issue’s full scope and importance. In that spirit, I would like to begin this writing with an admission: though I would like to spark discussion about compulsory voting within the hedges, I will not be able to address all of the nuances of a question as complicated as “How should we, as a community, vote?” in 1000 words.

Publics are back — enjoy responsibly

After two years, public parties are finally coming back. Two out of four classes of undergraduates have never had the opportunity to attend a public, while juniors had their one year with public culture cut short. Many members of the Rice community are unfamiliar with public parties and all they entail, while others’ experiences are two years removed and they are eager to return to the parties of their underclassmen days.