Rice gave respect to the highest bidder

By Charlotte Evans     8/27/15 11:50am

Rice University was recently the top-ranked school for race/class interaction by the Princeton Review. The administration prides itself in its diversity of students that attend from countries around the globe and honors these students by displaying the respective country flags across campus. Except for when it doesn’t. 

This past June, China’s vice premier, Liu Yandong, visited Rice to attend a meeting between the Chinese and American university presidents. Graduate students and summer scholars noticed something strange in the days prior to the meeting: The Taiwan flags around campus mysteriously disappeared and were replaced with different countries’ flags. When the administration was questioned about this, they responded that this decision was made due to “political politeness.” 

This quiet “political politeness” indicated to the numerous Taiwanese students on campus that they don’t matter to Rice University. Their homeland, which gave them the foundation needed for their scholarly success, was reduced to nothing because the administration here felt afraid to defend the diplomatic relationship between Taiwan and the United States that has been occurring since Taiwan Relations Act of 1979. To the administration, it was easier to stop showcasing some of the brightest students on campus than it was to simply maintain the standards for which the university claims it stands for.

---

---

Because of Rice’s motto “unconventional wisdom,” I believed that the institution would not bow down to political pressure and would respect the students it represents. Instead, it clearly demonstrated that respect should be given only to the highest bidder. As a domestic student that works closely with international students on a daily basis, I find it imperative that all students be treated with dignity and respect regardless of country of origin. The students from Taiwan did not get that courtesy this summer. We are all here together, and there are no limits to what we can achieve together as long as each one of us feels like we are valued.

---