Rice University’s Student Newspaper — Since 1916

Thursday, April 25, 2024 — Houston, TX

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Anticipation rises as Beer Bike nears

(03/12/10 12:00am)

On your mark, get set ... oh, Beer Bike is still a week away. On March 20, the Beer Bike Parade will take students to the Beer Bike track, where students, faculty, staff, alumni and other members of the Rice community will watch the four races of this year's Beer Bike.The race schedule this year will be slightly different due to the addition of an exhibition race between Duncan College and McMurtry College. The alumni race will start at 12:40 p.m., 20 minutes earlier than in past years, and the exhibition will start at 1:25 p.m. The exhibition will follow alumni race rules, which means that there will be five male and five female bikers and chuggers on each team, with each biker riding two laps and each chugger drinking 12 ounces.


RESET, RPC earn blanket tax increase, while KTRU fails

(02/26/10 12:00am)

While the Rice Endowment for Sustainable Energy Technology and the Rice Program Council will both get the funding they hoped for via blanket tax, KTRU will have to try again next year. Six of the eight proposed amendments to the Student Association Constitution, which required a two-thirds majority to pass, succeeded in the SA General Election, which began at 11:59 p.m. last Thursday and ended at 2 p.m. Wednesday.Of the three blanket tax proposals, only RESET's was meant to create a new subsidiary organization of the SA. RESET received a 71 percent vote in favor, and will now receive $9 annually from every undergraduate.


Video: Sheikh, Wu face off in SA presidential debates

(02/19/10 12:00am)

Student Association presidential candidates Selim Sheikh and Tiffany Wu debated Monday night after the SA senate convened. Thresher Design Director Eric Doctor moderated the debate, which included questions from himself and the audience. Sheikh, currently the SA internal vice president, and Wu, the SA treasurer, were allowed one minute each for opening statements and question responses, two minutes each for closing statements and 30 seconds each for rebuttals. Certain answers are paraphrased for conciseness, and quotation marks signify direct quotes.


Despite economy, donations to Rice remain consistent

(02/12/10 12:00am)

While the university may be following the nationwide pattern of fiscal restraint, Rice's funds have avoided the negative national trend in philanthropic giving. Vice President for Resource Development Darrow Zeidenstein said that participation in alumni giving at Rice has gone up 1 percent over the past year, reaching 35 percent and an all-time high in cash donations.


Proposed Beer Bike parade changes fail

(02/05/10 12:00am)

Come March 20, students sober and inebriated alike will accompany a caravan of trucks around the Inner Loop toward the Beer Bike track, water balloons at the ready. Because recent changes proposed to the parade route were voted down, most of the participants will be familiar with the route, as this year's Beer Bike parade will hold the same format as last year's.The college Beer Bike coordinators voted Monday against the proposed changes, the majority electing to maintain the current parade format. The result of the vote matched the results from a recent poll conducted by the Student Association, which showed student support for maintaining the parade's current format.


SA begins blanket tax reform

(01/29/10 12:00am)

Earlier this month, the Student Association created a new committee on blanket tax reform to correct the perceived lack of oversight in tax proposals. The need for oversight of the unregulated system was highlighted by repeated confusion at election time. For example, until last year, University Blue, a former student-run literary publication that had been defunct for several years, continued to receive $1 from each undergraduate student's tuition. Of the six blanket tax proposals to reach last year's ballot, the only one to pass was an amendment to remove UBlue's blanket tax.


Owl Days dates to change

(01/29/10 12:00am)

Come mid-April, prospective students will descend on campus in greater numbers than ever before. Rice's Student Admission Council and the Office of Undergraduate Admission set this year's Owl Days and Admit Days in the final two weeks of classes, giving admitted students the opportunity to visit Rice and get a taste of campus life. This year's Owl Days are scheduled for April 15-16. As in previous years, prospective students will stay overnight with student volunteers. The two Admit Days will occur the next week, on Friday, April 23 and Monday, April 26 - the final day of classes and the first day of dead week, respectively.


Berlin Wall remembered at Hanszen

(12/04/09 12:00am)

While most prepared for Thanksgiving break, a group of students covered the windows of the Hanszen College Commons with graffiti. But these were no delinquents; rather, they were participating in one of several activities arranged by German Professor Klaus Weissenberger in honor of the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. The idea for the project arose after the German Embassy in Washington, D.C. began approaching a number of U.S. universities with the hopes of celebrating the anniversary. Originally, the embassy imagined a week-long series of events - including a speaking competition, a graffiti competition, a charity run and a gala - to create interest in German culture and history and to remember the anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall.


Grad rates released

(12/04/09 12:00am)

Football and basketball may not have defeated either Houston or Texas over the weekend, but Rice athletics gained a victory of its own with the release of the most recent student-athlete graduation rates. According to statistics released two weeks ago by the National Collegiate Athletic Association, Rice ranks seventh in the nation among NCAA Division I-A schools in student-athlete graduation rates as listed by the four-year federal rate, at 79 percent, the same as last year. Rice is also ranked eighth according to the graduation success rate, at 93 percent, a 1 percent improvement over last year.




Ministers reunite

(11/06/09 12:00am)

While students prepared for Night Of Decadence weekend, a group of suited men reunited around the piece of the Berlin Wall in front of the James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy Friday afternoon, nearly 20 years after the fall of the wall on Nov. 9, 1989. The former foreign ministers of France, the Soviet Union, and East and West Germany, as well as the former private secretary to the British prime minister, joined former U.S. Secretary of State James A. Baker III in a panel Friday evening at the Baker Institute. The panel spoke to a mixed audience of more than 200 Rice faculty, students and alumni on the fall of the Berlin Wall and the subsequent quest for German reunification.


NOD attracts whole new world of scantily clad

(11/06/09 12:00am)

While some partygoers may enjoy fond memories of Wiess College's Night of Decadence, others are still trying to figure out what exactly happened - or at least wish they were unsure. Approximately 1,300 Rice students and their guests - 100 more than last year - descended on the Wiess quad and commons for the four-hour Disney-themed party last Saturday.


NOD decorations underway

(10/30/09 12:00am)

Tomorrow, numerous childhood images from Rice's undergraduate population will be seen in a new light. The Wonderful World of NOD: Someday My Prince Will Come, this year's incarnation of Wiess College's public party, will feature a Disney castle front, an under-the-sea themed bar and a light-blue Sparky, the 10-foot "phallic object" that traditionally graces the Night of Decadence, as described by Wiess College Social Vice President Charles Dai. Students can buy tickets for $8 during the week and for $10 at the door. Shirts are $10 and can be purchased, along with tickets, in the colleges' commons during lunch.


Panel speaks about law

(10/23/09 12:00am)

Last Monday, Rice hosted a seven-member panel of lawyers who spoke to an audience of approximately 60 students in the Humanities Building on a variety of topics, including their daily work and the process of entering into and succeeding in law school. The speakers represented a wide variety of legal professions and were invited to speak by alumnus Rudy Ramirez (Lovett '01), who teaches LOVE 237: Introduction to Law each fall and works as an assistant to the Fort Bend district attorney. This is the fourth such panel Ramirez has organized.


Furniture thrown from fifth floor McMurtry

(10/23/09 12:00am)

After a table and wooden chair were thrown from the fifth floor of McMurtry College, Housing and Dining levied several thousand dollars' worth of fines at McMurtry and Will Rice College. The incident took place sometime between 3-8:30 a.m. on Oct. 12. Though the wooden chair survived the fall, the table sank several feet into the mud in the McMurtry quad.



Concerns voiced over BCM merger

(10/02/09 12:00am)

A recent survey of Rice faculty, conducted by Computer Science Professor Moshe Vardi, suggests that Rice's Board of Trustees may have more than finances to deal with when considering a possible merger with the Baylor College of Medicine. The survey, conducted Sept. 11, indicates that more than 56 percent of the 295 respondents viewed the possible merger as either a somewhat or very bad idea, a significant increase from the 38 percent of the 314 respondents who agreed in a similar survey Vardi conducted in April.


Nobel Prize recipient selected to speak at commencement

(09/25/09 12:00am)

The Commencement Speaker Committee announced Monday that Muhammad Yunus, the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize recipient and Presidential Medal of Freedom recipient, will be the 2010 Rice commencement speaker, concluding a search process that lasted nearly six months. Best known as one of the chief proponents and purveyors of microcredit, Yunus is the founder of the Grameen Bank, which makes small loans to the poor that can be used to help start businesses.


Phishing attacks bedevil unwitting new students

(09/18/09 12:00am)

The next time you decide to supply a grammatically-challenged Internet stranger with your Rice e-mail password, think twice. Otherwise, you might become yet another victim of a recent string of phishing attacks. Last weekend, a widespread phishing scam netted 14 Rice accounts, 12 of which belonged to new students. Phishing, the practice of trying to obtain personal information by posing as a legitimate entity, is nothing new to Rice, but the past week's incident far exceeded the usual success rate for such scams.