News in brief: H2007, Campus-wide power outage

4/15/10 7:00pm

H2007

Students will live the spy life later this month, as Rice Program Council kicks off its annual Assassins competition, which lasts from noon on April 20 until noon on April 23.This year's theme will once again be H2007.

Participants will spend the week hiding and surprising other players with the goal of being the last dry spy.

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RPC Socials Chair Elizabeth Chen said at least 200 people are expected to participate in this year's Assassins competition.

Each participating student will be randomly assigned a target during the weekend before the event, whom they must tag by squirting them with a water gun obtained from RPC. When a person is tagged, the person must relinquish their current target to the pursuer. At the end of the event, the spy with the most hits wins a $40 Target gift card.

Students can pick up their water guns and targets from 1-5 p.m. on April 19 in the RMC or until 8 p.m. at Hanszen College New Section 281.

Participants in Assassins must abide by a core set of rules surrounding the competition. These regulations include no shooting water guns in class, at targets who are sleeping or in Fondren Library.

Although no major rule or safety changes have occurred, Chen said RPC's regulation of water guns will make the game more difficult than in previous years.

"One major change this year is that it will be harder to shoot targets," Chen, a Hanszen sophomore, said. "Last year, [participants] could use water bottles, but this year they can only use the water guns we give them."

Last year, RPC President Michelle Kerkstra planned a zombie-themed Assassins, but ultimately decided to keep with the H2007 theme after finding the zombie theme deviated too much from the spirit of the competition. H2007 has been the Assassins theme since the game was brought back after being suspended in the aftermath of the Virginia Tech shootings in 2007.

Chen said Assassins gives students the opportunity to interact outside of their own college.

"It gets you out of your comfort zone and your own home college," Chen said. "It lets you explore other colleges and meet people from other colleges."

RPC College Representative Joyce Liu said the competition works to bring the entire campus together.

"A lot of the activities people participate in are within the college," Liu, a Lovett College sophomore said. "This is nice because it's a campus-wide activity where the entire campus is participating together."

For more information on the event, visit rpc.rice.edu.

-Josh Rutenberg

Campus-wide power outage

Parts of campus were left without power for seven minutes Tuesday, a result of the main campus breaker temporarily opening.

The power outage, which occurred at 1:20 p.m. Tuesday, temporarily left some classrooms and dorm rooms without access to electricity.

Assistant Vice President for Project Management and Engineering Doug Tomlinson said the outage happened during the reinstallment of a renovated generator.

"Something caused our main campus breaker to open while we were reinstalling our renovated generator that provides partial power to campus," Tomlinson said.

Tomlinson said Facilities, Engineering and Planning noticed the problem immediately and worked quickly to resolve the problem, but the necessary safety precautions added time to the fix.

While FE&P has not been able to locate the exact cause, Tomlinson said they have fixed the problem so the breaker will not open in the future.

-Josh Rutenberg

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