Political engagement is now both more important and more difficult than ever. The stakes always seem higher in a presidential election year but now — with the pandemic, the protests and everything in between — the stakes feel like they were tied to a rocketship and are currently somewhere orbiting Jupiter.
Voting may be a constitutionally guaranteed right for most American citizens over the age of 18, but that right is infringed upon year after year by voter suppression tactics employed by legislators across the country. This November, that infringement is poised to be only more severe due to the ongoing pandemic and President Donald Trump’s consistent undermining of the United States Postal Service. Although the grim reality is that most voter suppression tactics are out of an individual voter’s control, there are some steps you can take to protect your vote.
It’s been a tumultuous summer, even for the opinion section of the Thresher. In previous years, we haven’t published any opinions over the summer, saving the hot takes for each semester. This past summer, we published 14 opinions and three staff editorials.
On a typical morning this fall, on-campus students might drop by the servery for breakfast on the way to a class and pass contracted construction workers building the new Sid Richardson College dorms. We take weekly COVID-19 tests at centers staffed with volunteers, attend classes led by professors with little to no prior experience in online instruction and receive emails from student leaders who have had to take on enormous responsibilities beyond their job descriptions. Behind our daily actions are hundreds of people working hard and going above and beyond to ensure that we can maintain a semblance of normality in our college experience.
When you visit return.rice.edu, the university’s online hub for information about reopening plans, you’re redirected to coronavirus.rice.edu. It’s a seemingly harmless swap — “return” becomes “coronavirus” — but one that is indicative of the two incompatible narratives the administration has been feeding its students, staff and faculty.
In July, Dean of Undergraduates Bridget Gorman sent out an email to the undergraduate student body which highlighted the policies for Rice’s reopening plan for the fall. It is very thorough and we greatly appreciate the work the administration has put into this plan, but we have a lot of concerns about how it will affect students with learning and physical disabilities, as well as students with medical and mental health issues. We urge the administration to ensure that the voices of students with disabilities will be heard and that their needs will be accommodated.
Five months ago, we sat in the Thresher office, eating chips, chatting and editing articles along with our fellow staffers. During our last in-office work cycle for the spring semester, before everyone began using phrases such as "these unprecedented times," we were focused on finishing our articles under the wire, wondering how likely it would be for Rice to make classes remote for the rest of the semester.
Rice University’s president and provost’s message on July 28 summarized all the steps the university has taken to assure the safety of our community and our ability to fulfill our mission. As the new academic year is about to begin, however, the rate of new COVID-19 cases is still very high and deaths in Harris County continue to increase. The pandemic is still spreading unabated in a community where approximately 1,500 of our off-campus undergraduates, our graduate students and our staff and faculty will live, dine, shop, party and risk being exposed to COVID-19. The same group of people will then come to campus to attend classes, teach, research, work and potentially infect more people.
“Even at this reduced risk, students and their parents need to know that the campus will not be safe, and the risk to health and lives should be evaluated against potential benefits. Therefore, it is worth examining what these benefits are,“ writes Professor Moshe Vardi.
“[Calls] to remove Rice’s statue are problematic and should be rejected. They present a false view that we should not commemorate a historical figure who has made valuable contributions to society because this person had moral flaws,“ writes Jacob Saldinger (Sid Richardson ‘16).
“When we talk about a “return” to campus, we must be clear that it is not in any sense a return... The classroom to which about half the faculty has agreed to return will not be the classroom we left in March,“ writes English professor Helena Michie.
Earlier this month, an amalgamation of NBA players announced that they would be replacing the names on the back of their jerseys for the rest of this upcoming season with NBA-approved social justice-related phrases such as “equality” and “freedom.” These types of phrases should be foundational principles upon which we stand, but the NBA’s decision to let players put these phrases on the back of their jerseys leaves one asking: What about human rights violations in China? Will NBA players be allowed to put “I stand with the Uighurs” or “Free Hong Kong” on the back of their jerseys? The Chinese Communist party has carried out human rights abuses targeting many different minority groups in Xinjiang and has forced groups like the Uighurs, Kazakhs and others into internment camps, where they are perpetually surveilled while given little to no rights.
During the past couple of weeks, Rice faculty have received various messages from Rice University administrators that explain in detail how Rice is working to provide a safe and effective learning environment for students in the fall semester. These plans are premised on the physical return to the campus of a significant majority of the undergraduate population. While I am grateful for the efforts of our colleagues in administration, I am also deeply concerned that these measures are not sufficient to provide the level of safety that Rice students and employees should be able to count on. In keeping with Rice’s long-standing commitment to life-safety and the well-being of the community, I feel compelled to convey my concerns.
"We are deeply concerned about Rice’s current policy-writing process regarding the release of a new Title IX policy, due August 14. Based on our observations and concerns with the administration's response, we feel there are issues in the following areas: coronavirus accommodations, publication of data, transparency and equitable representation."
Students deserve to know more given the substantial adjustments we will have to make in response. We implore the administration to be more transparent about their contingency plans.
We believe the contents of Leebron’s email, and the fact that it has been the only statement made by the administration on the subject, show that the administration is not taking these demands seriously enough. We implore the administration to take decisive action and commit to implementing the demands of Rice's Black community.
“Statues are not meant to teach events. They are constructed to honor the memory of those depicted. Like all slave owners, William Marsh Rice is not worth reverence,” write Taylor Crain (Lovett ‘21), Lauren Palladino (Duncan ‘21), Emily Weaver (Jones ‘22) and Divine Webber (Duncan ‘22).
“To make a true difference in creating an equitable society, Rice’s course should educate students on the history and sociology of race as a construct, how systemic racism manifests in every facet of society and how to be anti-racist rather than simply not racist,“ writes Nicole Zhao (Brown ‘15).
“In this cultural moment the university can no longer play the same old games of working groups and task forces to confront its racist history. Therefore I am calling for the replacement of the statue of William Marsh Rice in the middle of Rice University’s campus with one of Raymond Johnson, the first Black graduate student at Rice and a current professor in the math department,” writes Yoseph Maguire (Wiess ‘18).
On May 25, Derek Chauvin killed George Floyd. Chauvin, a Minnesota police officer, pressed his knee against Floyd’s neck for almost nine minutes while Floyd was handcuffed and lying face down on the ground. Floyd did not merely “die in police custody” as the Washington Post and other publications continue to insist on phrasing it. As Floyd pleaded that he couldn’t breathe, a police officer killed him. Active voice.