Letters to the Editor

8/28/08 7:00pm

Thresher article omits information

To the Editor:

We appreciated the article in the Aug. 22, 2008 issue of the Thresher about a planned Sociology Ph.D. program ("Rice granted $6.4 million to create Houston's first Sociology Ph.D. in 2011"), but we would like to clarify a few things for the record and for the Rice community.

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First, the article failed to mention that our graduate program must be approved by the Graduate Council and the Faculty Senate. Faculty control of the curriculum is vital. We fully support that principle, and look forward to working with Drs. Vardi and Harter, and the faculty groups that they lead.

Second, while we hope that there will be up to 25 students involved in the program as they work towards their doctorates, we are planning for each incoming class to be between four and six students in number.

Third, the quote from Dr. Michael Emerson about our graduate program making "a more holistic education for the other social sciences departments" was either misunderstood or taken out of context. What we anticipate is that there will be some students from other programs who may take advantage of our course offerings, and vice versa. We have a history of working cooperatively on the undergraduate level with other departments across the campus, and we hope that the same will be true at the graduate level.

Finally, while we expect that the program will have a well-developed urban component that will rely heavily on the resources of the Center On Race Religion and Urban Life and the Houston Area Survey, we are planning a broad-gauged curriculum that draws on the strengths of the entire department.

Elizabeth Long

Sociology department chair

Pavilion style fails to match campus

To the Editor:

I visited the new Brochstein Pavilion, and I must say it is different. Different can be good. Duncan Hall was different, with bright colors and those massive black columns, but the colors and the black mellowed over time and now are not so jarring. The James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy was different, with Moorish style rather than Italian Renaissance, but the colors of brick and stone were familiar, and the building has become so. Gravel paths were different, shifting underfoot but not squishing, but the color matched the pebblewalks reasonably well, and there was a precedent with the walks from the grand entrance to Lovett Hall. All these took getting used to, but now they are seen as normal elements of Rice. I do not think Brochstein Pavilion will be the same.

The colors do not match the rest of campus. The monochrome whiteness is a radical departure. That white-gray concrete surrounding the building invades the adjacent space with a consistent non-color scheme. Where it isn't white, it has no color at all. The windows are so transparent, they do not even reflect the nearby trees or grass.

The style does not match the rest of campus. It looks like an Apple store, the glass and lucite kind. The building is "now modern," and the furnishings are "1960s modern." The building is square like a fish tank. How many other buildings on campus are so relentlessly geometric? Maybe the construction trailers.

Rice can stand to have a few different things. But those different things should contain themselves. Brochstein Pavilion does not. Rip out those pale sidewalks and put in something better suited to the surroundings.

Let Brochstein Pavilion glory in its difference, and trim back those sidewalks that ruin its clean and clear outline.

Robert Duffield

Baker '87

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