One step forward and two steps back is no way to make progress. The men's basketball team is no exception, but even the single step forward is a plus for a team that just snapped a seven-game losing streak against East Carolina University last Saturday.
Paris may be the city of love, but Rome is the city of romance, the perfect place to find that special someone. And while When in Rome, which ventures into sometimes trite and overly hokey territory, is not a great movie, it is still a fun, playful chick flick about searching for love within the city's beautiful piazzas.Beth (Kristen Bell, "Gossip Girl") is a workaholic curator for the Guggenheim Museum who works under the strict supervision of her critical boss (Tinker Bell and the Lost Treasure's Anjelica Huston). When she attends her sister's (Alexis Dziena, "Entourage") wedding in Rome, Beth plucks four coins out of a nearby fountain, and in doing so, causes the men who threw in the coins to fall in love with her. However, in spite of the spell-induced suitors' attempts to gain her attention, Beth ends up falling in love with her sister's best man, Nick (Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen's Josh Duhamel), who helps her snap out of her hectic lifestyle as well as the fountain's magic spell.
It is, perhaps, a telling reflection on our society that there was more buzz surrounding Steve Jobs' State of the Union than of President Barack Obama's. But while the Apple CEO's unveiling of the long-awaited iPad was, in a word, underwhelming, the President's address embodied a paradigm shift in his presidency that may prove to be the catalyst he so desperately needs.To say the last few months haven't exactly been smooth sailing for Obama would be a tremendous understatement. Job growth remains anemic at best, with millions of Americans reeling from their pink slips and imagining months of hardship and toil; the health care bill, muddled and mutilated by special interests and backroom deals, contains "reform" that is but a shadow of what the president once envisioned. And just last week, the once-imposing Democratic Senate supermajority crumbled under the flight of independent voters to Republican Scott Brown in Massachusetts.
Twenty-four hours. Twenty-eight people. One master plan. Mix it all together and you've got the Rice Players' The 24 Hour Plays. It is remarkable to think that a group of Rice students can write, direct and act an entire production, all within the span of a day. And it's even more remarkable to think that a feat this imposing could actually turn into the enjoyable, memorable event that it became.
Although the swim team closed out 2009 with a win at the Delta State Holiday Invitational, the team could not carry over its winning ways into the new decade. Rice (3-4) dropped its first two meets of the season over the past week, falling to No. 18 Southern Methodist University and the University of North Texas.Last Friday, the Owls traveled to Dallas to take on conference rival SMU (3-3) in their first Conference USA dual meet of the season. The Mustangs are a perennial national power, having dominated C-USA for years, so it was not altogether surprising that they bested the Owls 129-89.
As a follow-up to last spring's Veritas Forum on "Science and God," 17 Rice Christian fellowships and Houston-area churches sponsored the second Veritas Forum at Rice on Wednesday. The speaker this year was David Batstone, founder of the "Not for Sale" campaign, which focuses on bringing awareness to worldwide human trafficking. The Veritas Forum is a nationwide Christian program started at Harvard University, Michael Karim, current head of the planning committee of the Veritas Forum, said. After hearing about the fruitful conversations such forums generated among students and faculty, he said he and other members of Christian fellowships felt inspired to start one at Rice, beginning with last year's "Science and God" discussion.
Come mid-April, prospective students will descend on campus in greater numbers than ever before. Rice's Student Admission Council and the Office of Undergraduate Admission set this year's Owl Days and Admit Days in the final two weeks of classes, giving admitted students the opportunity to visit Rice and get a taste of campus life. This year's Owl Days are scheduled for April 15-16. As in previous years, prospective students will stay overnight with student volunteers. The two Admit Days will occur the next week, on Friday, April 23 and Monday, April 26 - the final day of classes and the first day of dead week, respectively.
With adrenaline running high and expectations continually rising, the women's basketball team had all the momentum in the world coming into its only game of the week, a weekend road match-up with University of Memphis last Saturday, an elite program in Conference USA. Unfortunately, the Owls (8-10, 2-3 C-USA) needed just a pinch more momentum, as they fell 59-58 in an overtime thriller that was just as entertaining as it was close.
After finally snapping a seven-game slide against East Carolina University on Saturday, the men's basketball team was looking to turn its season around against a struggling Tulane University Wednesday evening. But a night that looked like it would be the start of the team's redemption turned into disaster. Rice (7-13, 1-6 Conference USA) finished the night falling to Tulane (6-14, 1-6 C-USA) in overtime by a score of 79-74.Freshman forward Arsalan Kazemi led the Owls with 19 points and 13 rebounds. Junior center Trey Stanton contributed 16 points.
Thomas Alson Blakeney III died Wednesday, Jan. 20 at St. Luke's Hospital after nearly 19 years of service to the Chemistry Department working in its stockroom. He was 46. The cause of his death was not released.
Many students' first experiences at Rice consist of overnight visits as prospective students. The tradition lives on, even if over the past few years the names, dates and frequency of Rice's annual official prospective student visits have changed - from Owl Weekend to Owl Days to now Owl Days and Admit Days - to accommodate the growing class sizes (see story, page 1). Despite these changes, the idea has remained basically the same: Allow prospective students, who have already been admitted to Rice and are whittling down their final college choices before the May commit deadline, to stay on campus with a student host, sit in on classes of their choice and experience Rice culture as a whole. Unfortunately, the proposed dates for this year's Owl Days and Admit Days, sandwiching the last week of classes, threaten to undermine more than one Rice tradition. Admit Days' occurrence on the last day of classes, which is coincidentally College Night for both Hanszen College and Wiess College, guarantees that parents and prospective students alike will be eyewitnesses to some of the most widespread drunken antics on Rice's campus this side of Beer Bike. While the administration would like to flaunt Rice's social sphere along with its academics, this is not the angle to take - and one that seems almost antithetical to the administration's attempts to sweep all things Beer Bike-related (i.e., intoxicated and crazed) under the rug. The large majority of parents and prospective students will undoubtedly be perturbed by costumes and drinking games in the backs of classes; in turn, the Rice University Police Department will be keen on cracking down on underage drinking, which we fear will temper the merriment of certain revelers. Additionally, students interested in sitting in on a class or two will be shortchanged: Most classes on the last day will consist of exams, and those that don't will be dominated by drunken antics. And we're not even going to touch on the awkwardness of prospective students coming during the first day of dead period, when no classes are even in session.
Another week's end can only mean another trek into the Taco District for the Thresher's most courageous thrill-seekers. In the second installment of their culinary adventures, Yan Digilov and Ben Lopez, our lovably scruffy duo of tacologists, head for the western frontier to the ageless outpost of the Original Ninfa's.
Despite the Vision for the Second Century's plan to continually improve all aspects of the Rice experience, the newly released rankings from The Princeton Review hint that the opposite is happening (see story, page 1). Rice, while still ranked first in "quality of life," has gradually slipped in "best value" and now sits in seventh place behind a mix of small East Coast liberal arts schools and Ivy League powerhouses. While Rice is still in the top 10, we cannot be satisfied with continual downgrades. In the past, Rice sold itself on its "best value" reputation, with need-blind admission and an increasing no-loan income threshold. However, other schools have caught on to the needs of today's college students and their families, and are now leaving Rice in the dust with even more generous financial aid policies. Has the V2C pushed the university too far?
On Monday afternoon the college Beer Bike Coordinators voted against proposed changes to this year's parade, electing to keep the parade the same as it was in 2009.The final vote, which took place through a secret ballot, was 10-1 in favor of keeping the current parade format. Each college received one vote.
Beer Bike Coordinator Brian Henderson spoke to Monday's SA meeting about the proposed changes that would move the Beer Bike parade from the Inner Loop to a field near the football stadium this year.
It is Monday, and a tangible sense of excitement and raw creativity fills the Rice Gallery as volunteers and various gallery staff work to install El Anatsui's new piece, Gli, into the space. An industrial elevator allows workers to connect large sheets of flattened bottle caps to fishing line suspended from the ceiling. Kim Davenport, the gallery's director, converses with her colleagues regarding the proper positioning of the sheet in relation to the overhead lighting. The industrial logistics that make a work like Anatsui's 20-foot-high installation a reality contrast sharply with the overall aesthetics of the final product.
As the spring semester begins, students leave the holiday warmth of their families to return to problem sets and design projects that pile up like the dead leaves that litter the quad. Less conspicuous this time of year, however, is that winter can be an especially difficult time for those with mental illnesses, a significant but often unrecognized and untreated portion of the collegiate population.University years, typically when arresting uncertainty and ambiguity proliferate, are a particularly trying time for the mentally ill. As someone who suffered from mental illness while at Rice and has friends still there with similar afflictions, I understand that the fear of stigma and even university retribution prevents many from seeking help - a dangerous prospect for youth who typically have little familial support nearby and a plethora of means by which to harm themselves. In light of this, I ask you, the reader, to resolve to develop a more authentic sympathy for the mentally sick, especially those with whom you learn and reside.
