Special Projects

Ostrom explains research

Elinor Ostrom, the first woman to win a Nobel Prize in economics, visited Rice Sept. 23 to speak at the biennial Social Dilemmas Conference, held in the Baker Institute for Public Policy by the School of Social Sciences. The program featured presentations by prominent social speakers on causes and solutions for today's collective issues. Ostrom's lecture was entitled "Cooperating for the Common Good: Challenging Supposed Impossibilities and Panaceas." During her speech, Ostrom addressed the research she had done on the management of common resources. Ostrom said that humans can work together to combat the tragedy of the commons - the belief that people, being self-interested, will deplete a shared resource - and instead ensure resource sustainability. Ostrom's findings contradict the popular belief that this phenomenon is inevitable. Ostrom said that communities which utilize common resources can devise regulatory systems that help prevent resource exhaustion. In fact, she said that when people communicate, they manage natural resources with 92 percent optimality.

Online Comments of the Week

In response to "Sid's '80s fails to impress" Sept. 24:While I agree that some more effort can be spent in explaining what will work and will not work, blaming Sid Rich and RUPD for enforcing fire code and evacuating a building is unfair.

Friday's Sports Update : Volleyball defeats UTEP in home conference match

The women's volleyball beat the University of Texas-El Paso, 3-1, in a crucial Conference USA match on Friday night at Tudor Fieldhouse. The win brings the Owls to an 8-8 record with a 3-1 record in conference play. It wasn't an easy game as UTEP made sure Rice earned it.In the first set, Rice got off to a good start by taking a 14-8 lead. UTEP stormed back to tie the set at 15-15, but Rice pulled away as they won the set 25-20. Senior middle back Nancy Cole and junior outside blocker Ashleigh McCord led the team with five kills in the set. Senior libero Tracey Lam had six digs while senior setter Meredith Schamun had 11 assists and three digs.

Esperanza awaited anxiously, enthusiastically

As homecoming approaches, so does the annual Esperanza, girls-ask-guys dance (see story, page 5). Offering Rice students a rare chance to dress up and revisit the high school glory days of proms and homecoming dances, Esperanza is traditionally an anticipated event. The past two years have both sold out their allotment of 1,000 and 600 tickets, respectively. This year's number of available tickets has been set at 800; although this is a sizable increase from last year's allotment, there is still concern that this year's Esperanza will fail to accommodate all of those that wish to attend, especially with yet another enrollment increase in this year's freshman class pushing Rice's population to 4,000 undergrads.Furthermore, the decision to host the dance off campus is one worth second-guessing. The 2008 edition of Esperanza, often dubbed as the most successful incarnation of the event, was hosted on campus. Yet, the Rice Program Council has elected to move away from this proven formula for the second year in a row. The Thresher hopes that Minute Maid Park's distance from campus doesn't make university-provided transportation unfeasible. While frequent shuttles are slated to bring students to and from Minute Maid Park, there is a great possibility that wait times will make the classy event a mess for many partygoers. In addition, the Thresher hopes that the privileged students who are able to drive to the dance have the luxury of complimentary parking around the stadium.

Beyond The Hedges

National

Winner-take-all philosophy extends poverty

"I make an obscene amount of money," one CEO proclaimed at a recent talk I attended. "All CEOs of Fortune 500 companies make too much money," he continued. He then quickly moved onto the next topic as if cursorily mentioning the issue was enough. It was that comment and my subsequent research into CEO salaries (on average, 200 times greater than that of the average worker) that inspired this piece.In our winner-take-all culture, we value the superstars, the CEOs and the elite to such an extent that we neglect the masses of the country. We insist on paying LeBron James almost $15 million annually, yet we cannot pay our teachers even $50,000. We reward our CEOs with million-dollar stock options and bonuses, yet, to quote Vice President Joe Biden, "[CEOs] make $10,000 more in one day than the average worker makes in a year." We watch in admiration as 58 percent of real income growth from 1976 has gone to the top 0.1 per- cent of Americans while the salaries of middle-class Americans have been virtually stagnant.

The next Great American Novel

According to Wikipedia, a Great American Novel is one that, when it is published, insightfully captures the zeitgeist - "the spirit of the times," also according to Wikipedia - of the nation. Time magazine pegs Jonathan Franzen as this generation's Great American Novelist, and his new book Freedom is the work that clinched the title for him. That kind of instant canonization makes reading Freedom an interesting challenge: Not only do readers have to think about whether they like or understand the book, they have to decide whether their zeitgeist has been captured.Franzen has been on the unofficial Great American Shortlist since 2001, when his novel The Corrections earned the National Book Award and got him into an infamous public dustup with Oprah. Freedom came out in August and has already gained truly stunning amounts of critical praise, a #2 spot on The New York Times best-seller list and a path back into Oprah's good graces - the hardcover carries an Oprah's Book Club sticker.

servSuccessful Families Weekend brings thousands of parents to campus

Just as some students in the middle of their first semester began longing for home, Rice's annual Families Weekend brought a little bit of home to them. According to Director of Reunion Programs and Special Events Jennifer Harding, this year's Families Weekend, whose theme was a "Dynamic Community," brought more than 1,200 parents to campus. The event was coordinated by Harding, as well as Carl Nelson, the chair of the Families Weekend Steering Committee. Both Harding and Nelson, a Brown College senior, said that the weekend was truly successful without any reports of problems.

Sports notebook: Freshman brings home tennis title, Women's doubles takes second place

Freshman brings home tennis title

Volleyball splits conference matches on the road

While the 3-1 record the volleyball team compiled during their brief stay in Houston could make any Owl fan feel optimistic, the true mettle of the team was revealed during the team's journey to Hattiesburg, Miss. to take on conference rival the University of Southern Mississippi (8-5, 1-1 C-USA). In their first meeting with Southern Miss on Friday, the Owls had their way, as they won three of four games 25-23, 25-20, and 25-22 for a 3-1 victory. Their only game lost was a narrow 25-20 win for the Golden Eagles. Junior outside hitter Ashleigh McCord led the team with 14 kills while sophomore outside hitter Laurie McNamara added 12 kills. Senior setter Meredith Schamun led the team with 37 assists while senior libero Tracey Lam had 23 digs.

Chillin' with Nico Gardner

One afternoon last week I sat down with recent Rice grad Nico Gardner (Lovett '10) at the Brochstein Pavilion to talk about what he'd been up to lately. The last time Nico was in the Thresher was back in February for his installation at the student-run Matchbox Gallery ("Intersections: Houston draws lines at Matchbox Gallery," Feb. 5), and now he was just coming off a summer residency at Project Row Houses in Houston, where he had another installation on public display.While we waited on Salento to make Nico's sandwich, I asked him a bit about how he ended up at PRH for the summer and how he came up with the concept for his installation. Initially nominated by Visual and Dramatic Arts Professor John Sparagana, Nico then had to apply to PRH and was accepted to the residency program soon afterward. Best described as a giant marionette, Nico's installation looks like a sort of shaggy creature that can be controlled and manipulated by the viewer via a simple rope and pulley system that runs across the installation space.

Archis compete to design visitor center

Be sure to see the full article page with more illustrations of the Deep Axess and RE-Visitor's Center designs.Rome wasn't built in a day, but within a 55-hour period over the Labor Day weekend, Rice architecture students endeavored to design a visitor center attached to the Fondren Library as part of a competition.

Last week's online poll results

This week's editorial cartoon

Men's cross country races to best finish at OSU

The speech is familiar: The coach standing in front of his charges in the locker room before a tough race, imploring his players to push any mental obstacles or fears about the competition ahead out of their mind. But the coach's words of encouragement often vanish and the doubts and butterflies appear when the starting gun sounds, as some of the younger Owls found out during last Saturday's Cowboy Jamboree Inivitational hosted by Oklahoma State University in Stillwater, Okla. The eight-kilometer race was longer than any that most of the freshmen had ever raced in their cross country careers and while the challenge proved difficult, Rice still crossed the finish line with a seventh-place finish, its best ever appearance at the Cowboy Jamboree. Head Coach Jon Warren (Jones '88) realized the distance may have seemed insurmountable to some of the younger runners, but wrote it off as one of the many learning experiences in collegiate cross country. "The distance may have spooked some, and I didn't think they handled it as well as I thought they would, which isn't surprising," Warren said. "Eight extra minutes doesn't seem very long when you're sitting in a chair, but when you're tired from running across a variety of terrain it's a different story. [Freshman] Anthony Urbanelli was feeling sick, so I'd like to give him a chance to run one healthy."

Master search begins

Jones College has joined Wiess College and Will Rice College in the hunt for new college masters, as their masters Rudy Guerra, a statistics professor, and his wife, Nancy, will be leaving at the end of this year. All faculty members interested in becoming masters will attend a reception at President David Leebron's house on Sept. 29. The reception will allow members from all three of the respective college master search committees to meet and evaluate potentials, Master Search Committee member Chance Marshall said."Right now we're trying to get a pool of faculty to search from, so then we can narrow it down," Marshall, a Jones sophomore, said. "It's a little bit challenging because Will Rice and Wiess are looking for masters . the pool is shared."

Rice rises to top 50

London's Times Higher Education magazine's newly released university rankings place Rice among the top 50 universities in the world, a marked increase from last year's rank at 100th place. Rice is the only university in Texas to appear on the Times Higher Education's list of top 200 schools worldwide, and is ranked 29th among the 81 universities on the list from the United States and Canada. "The top 200 universities in the world represent only a tiny fraction of world higher education and any institution that makes it into this table is truly world-class," Ann Mroz, editor of Times Higher Education, said. "Being ranked 47 in the world's top 200 is an impressive achievement."

Catching up to Corgan

Thank God for Last.fm. When the Internet radio station alerted me that Smashing Pumpkins would be playing in Houston in a matter of weeks, I was beyond excited. Understand that I've been waiting to see Billy Corgan and the Pumpkins live ever since my cousin burned me copies of all their albums back when I was in seventh grade. For a good while they were the only CDs that I owned (besides the Harry Potter and Spider-Man soundtracks, but that's a different story), and needless to say, I listened to them nonstop.Unfortunately at that point the Pumpkins had been disbanded for close to two years, so there wasn't the normal process of discovering a new band, listening to all their music and then eagerly anticipating their next show or album - hell, at that age my parents didn't even let me go to live shows. Still kicking myself for missing the newly re-formed Pumpkins when they came to town in 2007 for Buzzfest XX, I scratched together the cash to buy a ticket to their show at Warehouse Live this past Tuesday and enjoyed every deafening second of it.

Parents flock to campus for weekend

The hedges are alive with the sound of parents this weekend for Rice's annual Families Weekend.Families Weekend kicked off yesterday and will last until Sunday. Approximately 1,500 parents and guests of students are expected to attend. The theme for this year is the "Dynamic Community" and is centered around the 11 residential colleges working together to create a dynamic Rice community.

Baker Institute Student Forum debate: Arizona immigration laws (2)

MATURITY IS THE realization that you do not always get what you want: a realization that seems to escape the authors of Arizona's new immigration law.These authors seek to paint their efforts as filling in where the federal government, allegedly indifferent to the suffering of its citizens at the hands of insidious foreigners, refuses to act. In doing so, the authors ignore the fact that the federal government's inaction stems from the honest disagreement of all Americans on the issue of illegal immigration, and not from the indifference in Washington. Infuriated that they have not been able to get America to go along, supporters of Arizona's immigration law intend to break federal law and set their own immigration policy (exclusive control of which the Constitution grants to the federal government) in order to get their way.