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Sean McBeath

NEWS 8/26/10 7:00pm

Administration consistently neglects students' input

By Sean McBeath

In the past few weeks, KTRU has received a tidal wave of support as it faces the imminent sale of its broadcasting rights. The support comes largely from KTRU and Thresher media alums who spent many a Wednesday night down the hall from each other; however, these people are coming out of the woodwork.And this is KTRU we're talking about: an organization on campus that has its requests for blanket tax increases consistently voted down - overwhelmingly - by the student body, and whose listener base on campus is likely outnumbered by the students who would rather see it closed for good.

NEWS 12/3/09 6:00pm

Martel erroneously labeled as a mistake

By Sean McBeath

I've been listening to people call the founding of Martel College a "mistake" for about a year now, and it's time someone set the record straight: The "Martel mistake" is a Rice myth. Admittedly, it's a pervasive one. So pervasive, in fact, that we allowed it to shape the way in which we most recently undertook the founding of our two newest colleges.First, let's rewind nine years. With the charge to form a new college at Rice, Martel's first masters, Joan and Arthur Few, selected the members of Martel's Founding Committee: a group of 16 students - two each from the eight existing colleges - whose charge was to create the foundation upon which Martel would be built. The Founding Committee met for the first time in October 2000, more than a year before any students would move into Martel, to discuss how to begin the first new college in 31 years.

NEWS 2/12/09 6:00pm

Future of newspapers needs local support

By Sean McBeath

In the midst of the current financial crisis, we hear story after story about the loss of jobs and Wall Street bailouts. But we are facing another threat that goes largely unnoticed. While banks and the Big Three - General Motors, Ford, and Chrysler - crowd around Congress to gather the remains of our tax money, printed publications are going silently into the night, as newspapers and magazines watch their advertising revenues disappear.It is a trend that started years ago with the invention of online classifieds, which have been siphoning away business from the historical cash-cows of the newspaper world. It has been a slow process, to be sure, but one soundly documented over the last decade. The most recently publicized event demonstrating the fall of the print media giants has to be The New York Times' decision to sell advertising space on its front page for the first time in over 150 years.

NEWS 1/15/09 6:00pm

Rice overlooks out-of-state students

By Sean McBeath

Over the last few years, we've seen the introduction of a new campus-wide marketing effort and new slogans and taglines to broaden Rice's footprint in the college market. The driving motivation behind the implementation of all these changes was to break Rice's regionalized reputation as the "Harvard of the South" and to begin to draw students more heavily from schools outside of Texas. While some say that the measures we have taken as a university - making phrases like "Unconventional Wisdom" and "Who Knew?" the most prominent verbal associations with our name - are actually cheapening our reputation, that's not the point of this article.My point is that, for all the money we're putting into advertising, we should be experiencing tremendous returns. But when I go home, most people I talk to have never heard of Rice, and half of those who have don't know whether it's in Houston or Austin. Financing isn't the only support that a project of this scale needs. If we're really trying to draw out-of-state students, the administration - with the help of the Faculty Senate - needs to make efforts to accommodate them.

NEWS 11/20/08 6:00pm

'Turkey Day' undervalues day's meaning

By Sean McBeath

While we have gobbled up the latest news on the numerous wars taking place across the world, another war has gone unnoticed, slipping beneath even the lowest of radars. I'm talking, of course, about the War on Holidays.Do you remember a time when we had Christmas Break? Easter Break? Well, those glory days are over, my friends. Wring what little pleasure you can from the memories of those greater times and relish what delight you can from your "Winter Recess" and "Midterm Break."

NEWS 10/30/08 7:00pm

Lack of institutional memory affects future of university

By Sean McBeath

For most of us, Rice exists for four years. We matriculate; we grow up a little; maybe learn something; and move on. Occasionally, we are reminded of the evolution of the school by incoming freshmen: They know almost nothing of what happened before they arrived. The stories of legend from your freshman year never pass to them. There is no oral tradition here. Those legends die when you graduate.And so, when we experience a great shift, we see it as just that: one change among the years we spend here. We're content to watch as "progress" is forced upon us, not because we necessarily agree with the motives or purposes we see in it, but because we see Rice four years at a time. And how much can change in four years?

NEWS 10/9/08 7:00pm

New finance policy another deception

By Sean McBeath

Treasure these years. Because at the rapid rate things are changing, you won't recognize Rice at the end of your years here. Remember the school that you fell in love with during Owl Weekend? On your campus tour? When your brothers and sisters moved in five years ago? Kiss it all goodbye, because you're about to get hit with the full force of a reorganization nearly five years in the making.Some will argue that this is simply the next step in Rice's 10-year cycle of expansion. "It's natural," they will tell you. "This is how things are meant to happen." But what we as a student body are witnessing is not progressive thinking, but rather the result of an administration that consistently turns a deaf ear and a cold shoulder to the concerns and complaints of its student body.

NEWS 4/10/08 7:00pm

Sans serif soliloquies:Untapped power of college system: shenanigans

By Sean McBeath

In the rigmarole that is a Rice education, it's easy to lose focus. We spend so much time occupying the floors of Fondren Library and pounding cappuccino at Coffeehouse that schoolwork overshadows the rest of our lives. And, with what little remains, we fail to appreciate the one thing that should save us from the mundane routine into which each semester eventually falls: The college system.While many universities have their own local rivalries, Rice finds itself in a rather unique position. With our proclaimed academic rivals residing thousands of miles to the northeast and our academic equals spread across the south, we find ourselves without any unifying force to pull us together as a student body.

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