Special Projects

Live tattoo show is ‘Self Care’ for artist, audience

Adriana Amaris, a Sid Richardson College senior, gave a closing night performance for their solo-exhibition “Self Care” at Sleepy Cyborg Gallery on Feb. 18. The show consisted of two parts: a collection of eight mixed-media art pieces inspired by tattoos and the tattooing process, followed by a live tattoo show held on the last day of the exhibition, where Amaris tattooed two of her friends with artwork featured in the show.

Soul Night amplifies multidimensional Black narratives

Featuring dance, song and spoken word, Soul Night provides an outlet for Black students at Rice to unapologetically voice their individual perspectives while simultaneously celebrating their shared identities. Preceded by a dinner reception, the event is the Black Student Association’s annual cultural showcase, held in the Grand Hall for the last time. This year, the show’s theme is Black excellence, which performers aim to honor in all of its nuances. Students and community members can watch Soul Night on Saturday, Feb. 26. Dinner starts at 6 p.m. and the show starts at 7 p.m.; tickets are $10.  

Rice Parent to Parent Network

Women’s hoops gets first conference sweep

The Rice women’s basketball team picked up their first conference play weekend-sweep by defeating the University of Alabama at Birmingham and Florida International University. Both games saw the Owls in a neck-and-neck contest to the very end, something that has troubled the team so far this season. However, according to head coach Lindsay Edmonds, closing games has been a point of emphasis, and she was proud to see her team pull through in both games. 

36 runs in 27 innings: Longhorns crush Owls in Austin

Rice baseball was swept by the No.1 ranked University of Texas, Austin to start their season this past weekend.  In Jose Cruz Jr.’s debut as the team’s head coach, the Owls lost to the Longhorns each day of the weekend by large margins: a 7-0 defeat on Friday, a 15-1 loss on Saturday, and a final score of 14-2 on Sunday.

Three Owls take gold at men’s T&F C-USA championships

Three Owls took home gold medals as the Rice men’s track and field team placed fifth at the Conference USA championships in Birmingham, Alabama over the weekend. On Saturday, junior thrower Nick Hicks won his second straight conference title in the weight throw, while junior vaulter Natan Rivera took gold in the pole vault, edging out teammate Grant Levesque on a tiebreaker. Levesque would get a gold of his own the next day though, winning the heptathlon. According to head coach Jon Warren, while it’s tough to gauge the team’s progress during the short indoor season, he was happy with the results.

Simpson-Sullivan, Taylor set meet records at C-USA championships

Over the weekend, the Rice women’s track and field team traveled to Birmingham, Alabama for the 2022 Conference USA Indoor Championships. The Owls closed out the two-day competition with a fifth place team finish, scoring a total of 59 points. Overall, head coach Jim Bevan said he was proud of how his team competed on the biggest stage they’ve competed on yet this season.

Presidential candidates discuss role of Student Association at debate

Student Association presidential candidates Madison Bunting and Gabrielle Franklin highlighted their visions for the SA at the Thresher’s Election Debate on Monday, Feb. 22. Bunting is the SA’s current internal vice president, and Franklin is the current Brown College senator.

02-16-2022 Crossword Solutions

02-16-2022 Crossword: "Crosswordle"

Backpage Unlocks Campus Wide Conspiracy

Superb Owls: Rice alums help design SoFi Stadium, home to Super Bowl

On Sunday, the Los Angeles Rams won the Super Bowl, defeating the Cincinnati Bengals 23-20 in their newly constructed home stadium. The stadium’s architectural features were on display all night long from a seating bowl pressed up against the field, to the 360-degree, 80-million-pixel video board that allowed fans to relive Rams wide receiver Cooper Kupp’s game-winning touchdown, to the sharp curves of the exterior seen in aerial shots. Behind the design of the most expensive stadium ever built were two Rice Alums, Michelle Stevenson, the Senior Project Architect for the seating bowl, and Neil Prunier, the Senior Project Architect for the exterior.

Two-way Garibay: Guy preps for sophomore season

This past season, Shohei Ohtani of the Los Angeles Angels made waves across the baseball world by winning the American League MVP award as both a pitcher and a batter. Fifteen-hundred miles to the east, the Rice baseball team boasts a two-way player of its own in sophomore Guy Garibay Jr., who serves as both an outfielder and a pitcher. 

Baseball is finally headed back in the right direction

It is hard to overstate the importance of good coaching in baseball. As Yogi Berra liked to say, “90 percent of the game is half mental,” and while no one quite knows what that means, it comes down to baseball being some combination of preparedness and confidence, not to mention the physical act of going out and performing. A good coach can go a long way toward preparing a team and making it believe in itself, and despite the fact that they have yet to play a game, it feels safe to say that Rice baseball under the command of Jose Cruz Jr. is in a much better position to succeed than it was at any point over the past three seasons. 

Owls legend Cruz returns home to take the reins at Reckling

In 2008, now-Rice baseball head coach Jose Cruz Jr. had already been in the MLB for 11 years. He’d racked up over 200 career home runs and over 1000 career hits, he even won a gold glove in 2003, but he still had one thing left to accomplish.

Baseball looks to buck recent trend in upcoming season

Following the 2021 season, which saw the Rice baseball team go 23-29-1 and miss out on the conference tournament for the first time since 1993, Athletic Director Joe Karlgaard decided that the program was in need of a change. He relieved then-head coach Matt Bragga of his duties after three seasons, and brought in Jose Cruz Jr. in his place. 

Review: ‘The Fallout’ provides a nuanced and empathetic examination of grief

Last year, a St. Louis reporter tweeted a promo for a segment on where parents should look for hidden drugs in their child’s room. The tweet started with the sentence: “Looks like a normal teen’s bedroom, right?” — a grave mistake considering that the bedroom looked nothing like a normal teen’s bedroom (for starters, no teen has ever owned a three hold punch). There are two morals of this story. First, the news station needs to fire whoever their teen-bedroom correspondent is. Second, there’s a reason the common refrain is “write what you know.” It’s really hard to accurately portray something or someone you don’t have personal experience with. 

Review: ‘Death on the Nile’ is a murder-mystery without substance

Going into “Death on the Nile,” I had extremely high hopes for this murder-mystery film based on the 1937 Agatha Christie novel of the same name. Its predecessor, “Murder on the Orient Express,” was a fantastic film filled with twists and turns and a genuinely surprising but well-earned final reveal. However, “Death on the Nile” is a massive disappointment, failing at all levels of production.

Review: Rice Escape offers an engaging, escape room experience on campus

Among the many escape rooms littered throughout Houston is Rice Escape, a student-designed and operated escape room located in the Oshman Engineering Design Kitchen. The Thresher had a chance to visit Rice Escape and found it to be a great and convenient way to spend an afternoon with friends.

Review: Saba embraces a wide spectrum of emotion on “Few Good Things”

It’s been almost four years since Saba’s last release, “CARE FOR ME,” a therapeutic memorial for his late cousin Walter Long, who was murdered in 2017. The album saw him dealing with the loss of a mentor, friend and family member whose death left him empty. Saba’s detailed and personal writing about depression and grief struck a chord with listeners and drummed up anticipation for what Saba would do next.