Blackpink, arguably one of the hottest K-pop groups in the world, just dropped their highly anticipated debut album titled “The Album” last Friday. Managed by YG Entertainment in South Korea, the quartet is composed of four women — Jennie, Rosé, Lisa and Jisoo. Past hit singles like “DDU-DDU-DU,” “Kill This Love” and “As If It’s Your Last” have taken the international pop world by storm, amassing billions of streams and YouTube views. With their breakout performance at Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival in 2019 and collaborations with big name artists such as Lady Gaga and Dua Lipa, Blackpink has paved a way into the mainstream American pop music industry, and with the release of their first album, have finally claimed their spot as international pop mainstays.
Ghostbusters are on campus. They’re not a fictional group of men fighting supernatural beings, but a team of Housing and Dining staff led by Noel Romero, tasked with sanitizing hand-touched surface areas and performing other duties that help to stop the spread of COVID-19 around campus. The Ghostbusters team, along with many other H&D staff members, are trained to use an electrostatic sprayer, which uses a positively charged disinfectant that coats surfaces and cleans them.
Librex, an anonymous discussion app for college students, expanded to Rice University in August after becoming popular at Ivy League schools. Approximately 700 Rice students are currently signed up, according to Ryan Schiller, founder of Librex. While the app provides a platform for a large variety of conversations, it has been facing criticism by some Rice students for the users who are expressing slurs and offensive language without accountability or consequences.
As Rice students prepared to begin an unprecedented fall semester, a team of six undergraduates launched Rice Mutual Aid, a mutual aid network that compiles resources from among the Rice community for other students and offers financial support.
The FAQ section of the Culture of Care agreement was updated in September to include further clarifications on student life, including enforcement and student travel policies. The first version of this document was released to all returning students on July 1 to inform them about the Culture of Care and how it will function in residential colleges, dining and social events.
After weeks of campus being fully dry, Dean of Undergraduates Bridget Gorman sent out an email on Sept. 17 outlining plans to allow for “public events with alcohol” on Rice’s campus. The email, which was sent to various residential college student leaders, presents the guidelines and considerations for colleges to host events with alcohol, including the necessity for a dry, alcohol-free college event before hosting events serving alcohol. According to college chief justices, this decision may be the first step toward an eventual wet campus.
Rice Theatre will premiere a livestreamed performance of Oscar Wilde’s “The Importance of Being Earnest” this Friday, Oct. 9 at 8 p.m. CST. The play, originally published in 1895 with the subtitle, “a trivial comedy for serious people,” narrates the double lives of two men, John Worthing and Algernon Moncrieff, who both pretend to be named “Ernest” and deceive their lovers in doing so. Directed by Christina Keefe, director of the Rice Theatre Program, the production will be available to view online as well as to a select live audience who must abide by Rice’s social distancing protocol. All actors will be wearing masks and remaining at least six feet apart on stage, painting a stark portrait of how the pandemic has changed performance art.
Performance can elevate the power of poetry, already a valuable avenue of self-expression, by allowing the artist to share their work and feel the support of an audience. That, at least, has been the experience of spoken word poet Morgan Seay. Her work, which often highlights the Black woman’s experience, has been showcased in the Rice Women’s Resource Center’s “Engender” zine and at the Black Student Association’s Soul Night. The Hanszen College junior spoke to the Thresher about her creative process; struggle, resilience and hope in the Black community; and her presence as an artist at Rice.
In the first week of Nicole Tan’s freshman year, Hurricane Harvey arrived in Houston and devastated the city. Tan, who is from Philadelphia, said she had never experienced a natural disaster like Harvey before. “I had experience with hurricanes before, but not to this level,” Tan, a Sid Richardson College senior, said. “It was very much a bonding experience for my class.”
There are so many ways in which this semester is unlike any semester before. We’ve heard this said a million times in a million different ways. Every media outlet from the New York Times to the Wall Street Journal has written about how the pandemic has changed higher education. And yet, amid people constantly admitting that this year is different, one thing has remained the same: academic expectations.
This July, I received an unexpected email stating that the Spanish, Portuguese, and Latin American studies department no longer exists. It was dissolved, as a result of a merger between six different majors and programs. As a student majoring in Latin American studies, I was surprised to learn that I belonged to a new entity named the department of modern and classical literatures and cultures, which includes the former SPLAS department and the department of classical and European Studies. The African and African American studies department and Asian studies department, however, remained separate and apart from the merger. Among the reasons cited for the merger was a desire on the faculty’s part to encourage interdisciplinary collaboration as well as to boost the weight and visibility of the humanities departments at Rice.
At the beginning of September, a customer at my job refused to wear a mask and coughed into my face. To that point, I had been doing everything correctly: I took classes remotely, washed my hands every hour, double-masked, sanitized every object I or a customer could touch and showered thoroughly whenever I came home. I was confident that I would be fine. A week later, the symptoms started.
In a normal year, Rice’s volleyball, soccer and cross-country teams would all be in the midst of their seasons right now. Instead, due to schedule changes, cancellations and postponements, they are currently preparing for their respective upcoming seasons amidst an unprecedented level of uncertainty.
In the midst of celebrating Hispanic Heritage Month, don’t forget to support local Latinx businesses. Here are six Houston establishments owned and operated by Latinx members of the local community to check out in celebration of this month, but be sure to check out these (and other Latinx businesses) throughout the year.
Most people outside of the Houston area would be surprised to see a hot dog topped with cream cheese, grilled onions, crunchy fried onions, honey mayo and curry ketchup. However, at YoYo’s Hot Dog in Rice Village, that is the norm.
A new series of noon discussions hosted by President David Leebron for small groups of undergraduates began on Zoom last week. Dubbed “Lunch with Leebs” by presidential intern and program supervisor Michelle Fokam (Baker College ’20), the discussions are opportunities for students to learn about Leebron and discuss a predetermined topic of interest with him, according to Fokam.
This whole pandemic thing has gone on for a lot longer than most of us thought, so the Thresher has decided to provide a part two of our Quarantine Cookbook. Whether you're just discovering how to make boxed mac and cheese or you’ve mastered how to sous vide filet mignons over these last few months, many of us have turned to cooking for entertainment and comfort. Although Rice students are spread out around the world right now, good food is something that we can all connect over.
