Common reading requires big planning

4/17/08 7:00pm

Two years ago, back when the common reading program was nothing more than a few articles posted on an obscure Orientation Week Web site, we wrote a staff-editorial praising it for its potential benefits for the incoming class ("Common reading: Good idea, needs improvement," Sept. 8, 2006). We wrote that the reading material should be well publicized and that it should be incorporated into pre-existing O-Week structures, such as the English Composition Exam and academic lunches. This year, the common reading selection committee has narrowed the field down to two choices: Allen Raymond's How to Rig an Election: Confessions of a Republican Operative is the apparent front runner, and Greg Mortenson's novel, Three Cups of Tea: One Man's Mission to Promote Peace . One School at a Time is the alternative choice (see story, page 1). With these two options in mind, and with another year of common reading program experience to draw from, we have some additions and revisions to make to our previous opinion.

First, we think the committee should spend considerable time reflecting on the consequences of whatever choice it makes. Unfortunately, just like nearly everything else in today's world, even an effort as noble as a common reading program designed to stimulate intellectual discussion can be sucked into the political arena. While we know Rice is not using the common reading to influence incoming students' political leanings, the committee must take into consideration that at least a small proportion of the book's future readers might think otherwise. Both this year's How to Rig an Election and last year's Field Notes From a Catastrophe invite this type of conclusion at a cursory glance, and while we hope that future Rice students will not literally judge the book by its cover, we also feel that the orientation experience should try to avoid as much uncomfortable confrontation as possible between incoming students and the university.

Secondly, we are now a little more skeptical than before about the common reading's place in O-Week. While the English Composition Exam and already-existing academic structures would still be good places to re-introduce and expand upon the topic, we worry that trying to fit it in on a large scale anywhere else might be uncomfortable and ineffectual. At any given dinner discussion table, there is going to be a variety of common reading enthusiasm. There will be the excited new student who read every page of the book cover to cover, the apathetic new student who forgot there even was a common reading and the disappointed new student who hated the story as soon as he started it. Combine all of these students and awkwardness abounds. These are students who are just now leaving their homes for the first time; they want to spend O-Week just getting to know their surroundings, not arguing with people they have never met before. They have plenty of time to get into the intellectual debate later.

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The common reading is a good idea. It can foster communication, open new intellectual avenues and provide a sense of camaraderie between members of the incoming class. However, the selection committee has to take precautions to keep the common reading from being polarizing and divisive, and the O-Week scheduling committee has to know that it does not necessarily lose its merit if it is not forced into an awkward O-Week table discussion.

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