The Drinking Culture Task Force released its campus-wide survey results, revealing some troubling trends among the Rice community (see story, pg. 1). The survey received a resounding 672 responses from a diverse cross-section of the 11 colleges, surveying both drinkers and non-drinkers (about 25 percent of respondents said they did not drink). This commendable response rate is a result of good distribution, social networking and the utilization of college-wide distributions in addition to university-wide initiatives. The vast number of responses also proves how important the alcohol discussion has become, not just for a small population at Rice, but for the entire community
Students transferring into Rice get the short end of the stick by anyone's standards. With issues such as academic credit and housing, the transfer experience here is far from perfect or even acceptable.
Last weekend's annual Outdoor Show was a complete success, and members of the Rice community have only KTRU to thank for a full day of engaging festivities and excellent music that went off without a hitch. Having been in attendance for previous on-campus concert flops, KTRU was able to provide a completely new and different experience by organizing an event that centered on enjoying great music and discovering new local bands – two of the station's principle missions.
While the entrepreneurial spirit of Rice University may not be amongst the country's greateast — certainly not in comparison to Stanford's, whose students have contributed to little start-ups you may have heard of such as Google, Yahoo and Cisco — we are definitely making strides as a University towards fostering student entrepreneurship (See story, pg. 1).
Student-Student-taught courses have become quite popular at Rice, and we're not alone in our affinity for them (See story, pg. 1). An interest in student-taught courses is sweeping across the country with Rice at the very forefront of the movement.
For a few minutes, it looked like we might have actually had a partial government shut down last week.
There is so much discussion and numerous viewpoints today about the size of government, the amount of money the government should borrow, how big a deal the debt currently is, and whether or not we can responsibly raise taxes while still in a recession. But one of the major misconceptions present in a large number of debates deals with people's perceptions of taxes. Especially with the last midterm elections which so many people view as a clear message for smaller less intrusive government, the word "taxes" got thrown around so often, used pejoratively by the right, while being a taboo word for the left.
Barnes & Noble will soon over take more real estate in the RMC (see story, pg. 1). The contract of 13th Street, Sammy's and Smoothie King has expired, thus allowing a "Recharge U" convenience store, operated by Barnes and Noble, to open.