Campus Reaction: Rice students must avoid apathy (Eric Friedlander)

By Eric Friedlander     2/10/11 6:00pm

As a freshman, I can remember Rice students being described as people who were interested in learning for the sake of learning. There was a certain awesome quirkiness that permeated life here. I still remember a group of seniors building a touchscreen table remotely similar to something you would find in the movie Iron Man out of a glass table, a projector and a webcam. The point is that Rice students used to be more concerned with the intrinsic beauty and innate "badass-ness" of nature and technology instead of starting a career 10 minutes into their first day of Physics 101. This sort of trend can be attributed to several things. First, the generation of students that are entering college now are just plain different than those who entered Rice eight years ago. This generation is more sheltered and tends to excel in a structured environment. This small generational gap might explain the rise in pre-meds at Rice, despite the fact that getting into medical school is more difficult than ever. Yet the thought remains that perfect grades and perfect attendance will ensure admission. This type of thinking leads to less creativity and diminishes a culture of quirkiness that is vital at Rice.

More notably, I attribute these recent changes to the administration - a body that holds a deep seated insecurity with the public perception of the university's national reputation. The Vision for the Second Century has pushed Rice in a direction that decreases emphasis on undergraduate education and places more value on groundbreaking research, a mentality similar to schools like Harvard University or Yale University. This goal is appealing but not worth sacrificing some of the things that make the Rice undergraduate student body special. New faculty members seem more interested in securing funding for their own research than teaching and involving undergraduates.

A prospective student four years ago would have had many reasons to attend Rice over Harvard. Rice doesn't have the same reputation and prestige of Harvard, but it never will. You know why? Because it's HARVARD! And Rice will never be better at being Harvard than Harvard itself. Instead of trying to align ourselves with the Ivies of the world, why don't we focus on the things that make Rice special and make them better?

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Our university should do much more to encourage undergraduate participation in research. It should acknowledge and reward accomplishments outside of the classroom that embody what it means to be part of Rice. It should celebrate the fact that most students would sooner cut off their right leg than claim allegiance to any other residential college. It should stop treating Beer Bike like a giant embarrassment. These are issues that we should be focused on. Please allow Rice to remain the truly unique entity that it is.

Eric Friedlander is a senior and Jones College president.

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