Helping kick off Homecoming Week on Tuesday, the Rice Program Council set up a yard sale at the Rice Memorial Center in an effort to spread more school spirit with bushels of trinkets and T-shirts.
After last season's hardships, this fresh season gives the women's basketball team the opportunity to redeem themselves. During what many would label as a rebuilding season, the Owls are hoping to reap the riches of their hard work on the hardwood and turn that into success for the upcoming season. Rice is a particularly young team inside Conference USA and will need everyone, including a glut of sophomores, to fill the leadership void on the floor. Any team member with experience has the knowledge necessary to mentor and develop the several young players, or so the idea goes.
Graduate students may go to Valhalla instead of Willy's Pub and attend Graduate Student Association meetings instead of Student Association meetings, but they have decided to continue to be judged by the same Honor Council as undergraduates.On Oct. 7, the Faculty Senate proposed that the GSA establish a separate Honor Council for graduate students. However, through a vote by the GSA officers following that recommendation, the GSA has determined it will not change the current process, GSA President Kristjan Stone said.
I don't care where you are, what you're doing, or what you're wearing. Go see The Men Who Stare At Goats. After studying all week, you deserve it. This movie incorporates every element that is necessary to make an entertaining film - a great plot, colorful characters, and George Clooney's chiseled jaw - making it worth every penny. Rising director Grant Heslov (True Lies) has taken on a job that even better-established directors known for taking on ambitious films would have had second thoughts about. The outcome is a purely magical and comedic masterpiece.
After a few weeks of discerning, concentrating chow-downs, this week gave us a chance to take a more casual approach and select a restaurant conducive to relaxing while savoring tasty, unusual dishes. Yia Yia Mary's, located in the Galleria area, satisfied both those desires - though with some strings attached. As newcomers to Greek cuisine, we were not sure what to expect or what to order from the menu. It seemed as though many other patrons were in the same position, but like us, it didn't stop them from expanding their culinary horizons.
After three years of afternoons waiting idly for the on-campus shuttles, a trio of students has decided that their time will be wasted no more. Three electrical engineering students have taken it upon themselves to create a shuttle-tracking system as their senior design project. Hanszen College senior Katherine Threlkeld and Baker College seniors Bailey Basile and Alysha Jeans are designing a way to track the buses as they travel the Inner Loop and post their locations on a Web site.
Tera Lee Hampton and Mark Craig Blastophere, both of Bettendorf, Iowa, were married September 23, 2009, in Davenport, Iowa. Her parents are Kathy Lee and Mark Antony Hampton of Rock Island, Illinois. His parents are Sam and Katie Blastophere, of Texas, N.Y., formerly of Moline, Ill.
With its fantastic combination of gambling high rollers, upright religious workers and quibbling lovers, Guys and Dolls is a well-loved musical that has been revived multiple times on Broadway. Brown College's production of the play, directed by Brown junior Mike Clendenen and Brown sophomore Kensey King, valiantly strives for another great revival. While their version of the musical is a modestly entertaining show, it doesn't quite live up to the hype.Guys and Dolls is a lively comedy set against the backdrop of prohibition-era New York. In a last-ditch attempt to obtain the money he needs to host a game of craps for the high rollers in town, craps master Nathan Detroit makes a bet with the smooth-talking Sky Masterson that he can't get Sargent Sarah Brown to fall for him. But of course, Masterson and Sarah end up falling in love. Disaster ensues and misunderstandings abound as the two try to sort each other out.
Lovett College junior Julie Duong and Baker College freshman Nicole Ho celebrate the 60th anniversary of Fondren Library on Wednesday with arts and crafts. The library hosted several events, including a panel of speakers.
With Kenyans, Brits, Scots, Canadians and a single New Zealander comprising 13 the top 15 runners at Saturday's Conference USA Men's Cross Country Championship, the winner's circle was a lesson in geography. Luckily for the Owls, that lone Kiwi was none other than Rice senior Simon Bucknell, who powered the Owls to a third-place finish at the meet behind the University of Tulsa and the University of Texas-El Paso. Bucknell's seventh-place finish was a personal best, and was shortly followed by redshirt sophomore Michael Trejo and senior Scott Zivick. Finishing out the scoring for Rice were redshirt freshmen Gabe Cuadra and Matt Carey, who finished 20th and 28th, respectively. True freshman Sammy Abuhamra and redshirt freshman James Llamas rounded out the effort for the Owls.
The volleyball team kicked off the weekend with a victory over East Carolina University to end a three-game losing streak and concluded it with a big win over Marshall University, giving the team its first 2-0 weekend since late September. Rice (16-8, 8-5 Conference USA) opened its weekend Friday evening against a struggling ECU (9-16, 2-11 C-USA) squad that has managed two paltry wins on the year. The Owls took care of business handily, dispatching their opponents in the minimum three sets (25-19, 25-17, 25-17).
A group of students pass by in nothing but skin and shaving cream during Halloween's famed Baker 13 run. Despite conflicting with NOD, the tradition retained a large turnout.
In a rare combination of joining humanities with engineering, Bioengineering Lecturer Matthew Wettergreen joined four students in creating better storage for artwork at the Museum of Fine Arts Houston. The collaboration between Rice and the MFAH began when Interim Dean of Humanities Gary Wihl asked the museum's administration about the possibility of collaboration between itself and Rice's engineering department, MFAH Conservation Director Wynne Phelan said.
When you have a special occasion that demands a romantic setting, such as a birthday or an anniversary, you may typically settle for something a little less fantastic than you'd prefer due to the limits of your college budget. Fortunately, you are limited no more, for there exists a place where you can stun your date without having to spend excessive amounts. Welcome to Ciao Bello, the Galleria's recently opened Italian offering.
In less than two months, I will graduate with a bachelor's degree in ecology. Shortly thereafter, if graduate school applications go as well as I hope, you'll find me in a Ph.D.-track program for conservation biology or environmental science. Like most seniors around this time, I'm as excited as I am nervous. However, I have a secret. It's not much of a secret for those who know me, but considering you probably don't, and in light of what I've just told you, this may come as something of a surprise.
For most sports teams, the loss of four top athletes would be a season-ending handicap. But not, apparently, for the women's cross country team. Six underclassmen and one senior were burdened with carrying a team whose coach had elected to redshirt four talented veterans earlier this season, and did so impressively and admirably. The Owls took third place at the Conference USA Championship meet on Saturday, finishing behind behind second-place University of Texas-El Paso and first-place Southern Methodist University.
As Duncan College and McMurtry College begin filling up with sophomores and juniors from across the nine other colleges, we tip our hats to the Dean of Undergraduates office, specifically Assistant Dean Matt Taylor, for making the process both smooth and transparent (see story, page 1). Through the entire process, Taylor has kept students informed of the ins and outs of transfer plans. Many projects across campus are either shrouded or clouded, but this system was a fresh change.That being said, we feel this process was not as seamless as it could have been, for two main reasons. First, we feel the selection process should have been limited only to rising juniors, not both rising juniors and rising seniors. We wonder what well-adjusted rising seniors, those not disenchanted with their current situations, would abandon their college for new pastures in their final year at Rice. Unlike the rising juniors, whose two remaining years provide enough time to create lasting improvements to the colleges, seniors will be one-and-done, flitting and flipping through the system in extraordinarily little time.
The powderpuff playoffs do not begin until a week from Sunday, but one wouldn't know it after watching the past weekend of action. With nine teams vying for four playoff spots, the weekend's slate of games contained a postseason atmosphere as the quality of play reached new levels. Jones College looked to solidify its chances at a playoff berth in its match-up against Brown College, while the game between Sid Richardson College and Martel College provided the most surprising result of the season. But for this week, the spotlight was on the battle between Will Rice College-McMurtry College and Baker College-Duncan College. With each team on the cusp of clinching a spot in the playoffs, the pivotal encounter had major implications for the postseason and, as such, earned Game of the Week honors.
Gamers, grab your baseball bats. It's time to beat some more hookers.It's been a little over a year and a half since Rockstar Games blew the lid off the gaming world with its highly-anticipated installment in the venerable Grand Theft Auto franchise, Grand Theft Auto IV. Mothers covered their children's eyes, politicians worked themselves into yet another completely unfounded hissy fit and gamers the world over took to the streets of Liberty City, the living, breathing, tongue-in-cheek parody of the modern-day Big Apple.
