The Rice women’s basketball team played the longest game in program history on Saturday, falling to the University of North Carolina at Charlotte in four overtimes. With Rice holding a lead in the final seconds of each of the first two overtime periods, the 49ers hit game-tying shots to keep the game alive. The deadlock was finally broken in the closing minutes of the fourth overtime, as the 49ers pulled away to an 88-83 win, dropping the Owls to 0-5 in conference play. According to head coach Lindsay Edmonds, even though the Owls didn’t get the win, they impressed her throughout the game with their grit and resolve.
The Rice men’s basketball team will play an important conference game against Louisiana Tech University on Thursday. Having won 11 and lost 7 games so far this season, the Owls will look to improve on their 4-3 Conference USA record when they play the Bulldogs, who are tied for first place in the conference, in Ruston, Louisiana.
The Owls beat the University of North Texas last Saturday in their dual meet 175-119, to secure their first win of the season. In addition to the competition at the Gibbs Recreation and Wellness Center, the Owls celebrated their seven seniors during their senior day festivities. According to senior Marta Cano-Minarro, the meet is always an emotional one, but it was different this time as she was one of the swimmers being honored.
With the Lunar New Year approaching on Feb. 1, celebrations are happening in Houston to ring in new beginnings and the Year of the Tiger. The Lunar New Year is the beginning of the lunar calendar and is commonly referred to as the Chinese New Year, but is actually celebrated by several countries and cultures globally. With celebrations happening both virtually and in person, there are plenty of opportunities to commemorate the new year across the Houston area.
Lydia Wang’s love for acting bloomed when she was first introduced to Shakespeare in elementary school, and the Bard has inspired them ever since. She will be graduating this fall with a double major in visual and dramatic arts and mathematics and hopes to continue pursuing theatre in the future, where they can continue to bring characters to life through her own voice.
In “You Don’t Know Us Negroes and Other Essays,” Zora Neale Hurston powerfully establishes the immense contributions of Black culture and defends its worth. The collection, with an introduction by Henry Louis Gates Jr. and Genevieve West, was released on Jan. 18, nearly 60 years after her death. It features essays that have never been published before, as well as several essays that are being reprinted for the first time.
The Moody Center for the Arts is hosting their latest exhibition, “Soundwaves: Experimental Strategies in Art + Music,” to celebrate the history of artistic and musical experimentation, paying homage to visual and performing artists that blend the two together into a melting pot of visual and sonic elements.
Martel College senior Cynthia Chen grew up envisioning the quintessential college life portrayed in movies and books. Having taken a semester off during her sophomore year and having spent so much time learning from home due to the pandemic, Chen said she almost felt robbed of this experience. But she has learned to accept that her college experience is turning out differently from what she originally expected.
Extracurricular activities make up a major part of student life at Rice: there’s a large variety of clubs to choose from, a good number of which students may not have even heard about. Did you know that you can sign up to volunteer to teach English as a Second Language to adults or get involved in a fashion show? Many of these campus organizations will be at the virtual Student Activities Fair this Wednesday, Jan. 26.
In September 2019, nearly 100 students stormed the field at Rice Stadium during the halftime show for a football game against Baylor University. Wielding pride flags, volunteers led by our iconic Marching Owl Band protested Baylor’s refusal to recognize Gamma Alpha Upsilon, the then-unofficial LGBTQ student alliance at Baylor.
In August 2021, the Office of the Provost announced instructors could now opt out of showing their course evaluations to students amid the change to remote learning. Regardless of circumstances, the option of hiding evaluations is detrimental to students searching to understand the potential difficulties of future courses.
Due to concerns that pandemic-induced circumstances resulted in differences in course and instructor evaluation scores, the Office of the Provost allowed faculty to opt-out of showing their evaluations to students, according to an email sent out by the office in early August last year. In this email, the Office also wrote that the average evaluation scores were slightly better in fall 2020 and spring 2021, in comparison to previous semesters.
Associate professor of history Daniel Domingues da Silva was awarded a grant from the National Endowment for Humanities for his project, the Digital Archive of the Atlantic Slave Trades, on Jan. 12. The Archive was created to provide an online space for documents telling the history of the transportation of slaves in the Atlantic and North America.
The Rice University Police Department is developing a safety app for Rice students and faculty, estimated to be officially released by the end of this semester. Clemente Rodriguez, the chief of police, said this safety app has three major functions: Emergency Call, SOS function and Safe Corridor. He said he hopes that this app would enable users to think of their phone as another source for security.
While the majority of classes returned to in-person instruction this Monday, 1.68 percent of these courses remained online only, according to C. Fred Higgs III, the vice provost for academic affairs.
Housing and Dining staff have adjusted their practices to find alternatives for hard-to-get ingredients and to save costs in the face of nationwide shortages of various food products and a rise in inflation, according to David McDonald, senior director of Rice Housing and Dining.
