Healthcare debate attendance laudable

By Staff Editorial     3/18/10 7:00pm

This Saturday, more than 60 students attended a healthcare debate hosted by the Baker Institute Student Forum and Rice Young Democrats at Hanszen College (see story, page 1). Sure, the food may have played a part - serveries were closed, and the event promised Vietnamese sandwiches and tacos. But the food ran out in the first few minutes, and students remained to listen to Democratic and Republican students debate the relative merits and issues of healthcare reform.We at the Thresher are pleased. Not necessarily because the Tacos a Go Go proved the event to be a success - those wandering in the Hanszen Commons just two minutes after the debate began were too late for the food - but because of the implications of this attendance. Sure, serveries were closed, and the food was a step above what most might purchase on campus on Saturday evening, but more than 60 students remained for the final vote at the end of the debate, which showed a fairly even bipartisan split. For a campus that must alert, and almost force, its students to attend alumna and Houston Mayor Annise Parker's (Jones '78) Rice speech by delaying servery dinner, getting this many students to show up to a student debate is especially noteworthy.

But we also wonder what would have happened if food had not been offered. Would anyone have attended? Though we are impressed by Rice students' willingness to listen to their peers' opinions, we wonder what the talk might have been sans tacos.

We would like to commend BISF and the Young Democrats for putting together the event, however, and urge them to organize such events in the future. And we encourage students to attend: After all, you're only in college once. We're getting pretty tired of the apathetic-Rice-student stereotype, anyway.

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