This Week's Front Page
Student-taught courses may soon want to include a lecture on thriftiness, because the pocketbooks of Rice University are rapidly shrinking. As the latest victim of the 5 percent university-wide budget cuts, college courses will have to work with a yearly budget of no more than $250 per college next semester, down from the initial $5,000 per college allotted in spring of 2008.
Reasons have begun to trickle out why Rice University and BCM failed to reach common ground under their Memorandum of Understanding last month. The two institutions ceased considerations of a merger Jan. 11, in advance of the Jan. 31 deadline set by the MOU.
Come March 20, students sober and inebriated alike will accompany a caravan of trucks around the Inner Loop toward the Beer Bike track, water balloons at the ready. Because recent changes proposed to the parade route were voted down, most of the participants will be familiar with the route, as this year's Beer Bike parade will hold the same format as last year's.
Another chance led to another dropped lead for the men's basketball team Saturday afternoon, as Rice (7-15, 1-8 Conference USA) dropped a frustrating 76-65 loss to one of the nation's top teams, University of Alabama- Birmingham. Freshman Arsalan Kazemi led the squad with 15 points and 13 rebounds, followed by senior Cliff Ghoram with and junior Trey Stanton with 12 points each.
It's never too early to make history. In only the second meet of the indoor track season, senior Shakera Reece set Rice's second-fastest time for the women's 60-meter dash, with a time of 7.39 seconds. The mark was just one one-hundredth of a second away from the school record, 7.
It is a cold July day in Auckland, New Zealand, but Arsalan Kazemi is sweltering, sweating after sprinting up and down a lacquered basketball floor. Kazemi, playing for the Iranian squad in the FIBA Under-19 World Championship, steps to the free throw line and calmly sinks a pair, padding his 23-point, nine-rebound performance and sealing a 93-53 win over Syria.
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.