Teleportation is not science fiction. Far from it. It is an ancient, constantly refined sensation of detachment from the landscape traveled during a journey. You can experience this detachment in degrees, three of which I will mark.
Some plays strive to make audiences laugh, some try to invoke tears, others try to foster deep and insightful thought. The Rice Player’s production of Paganini boldly attempts to achieve all of the above throughout the play, but risks leaving viewers uncertain of how to feel. While the exact time period in which Paganini takes place is vague, the production, set in various European cities, is about a young, once world-renowned violinist whose soul belongs to the devil. Paganini has somewhat of a dreamlike quality throughout, making it difficult at times to distinguish what is real and what is not.The play, directed by Aaron Garret (Rice ’12), opens with the introduction of Nicolo Paganini, a poor, hopeless man who was once a famous violinist but had to sell his violin due to debt. A stranger gives him a high-quality violin, free of charge, on the promise that the stranger will be repaid. The remainder of the play follows Paganini through, as the Rice Players describe it, “a series of depraved adventures in love and music.” He finds himself in a slew of sticky situations, including, but not limited to, a jail cell populated with crazy men, a somewhat psychedelic clock shop, the operating table of a kooky quartet of singing doctors, and a jealous fit of rage upon finding out that his lover is cheating on him. The mood of the play varies greatly: some scenes are dark and almost scary, while others are lighthearted and comical. Throughout the story, Paganini is trapped in a continual attempt to decipher which actions will lead him to salvation and which to damnation.As emotionally confusing as Paganini is at some points, the play is largely redeemed by the talent and passion of the actors and actresses. Jones College freshman Rob Katz, who plays the troubled musician Nicolo Paganini, convincingly represents the whirlwind of emotions his character experiences. Throughout the entire two-and-a-half-hour production, Katz remains energetic and engaged, which is quite the feat considering how animated his character is. Conveying a believable performance of someone losing his mind is no easy task, but Katz’s acting approximately reflects how his character is feeling.In addition, multiple members of the supporting cast do a phenomenal job playing multiple roles, such as Baker College senior Alyssa Dugar, who portrays many characters ranging from a poor woman selling apples to Paganini’s mother to a washed-up, desperate call girl to a “professional” singer whose singing could be better described as screeching. While each of these roles is very different, she conveys each one with just as much passion as the last, giving the audience reasons to both laugh and cry.Another standout character in the Rice Player’s production of Paganini is Baker sophomore Paul Dingus, who plays three completely different fatherly figures. In one role, he appears as an old, hunched-over man: a slightly crazy clockmaker and father to one of the multiple girls whom Paganini becomes obsessed with. This scene takes on an especially dreamlike quality, enhanced by Dingus’s representation of a charismatic and outlandish clockmaker and creator of eerily lifelike wind-up toys. He also does a remarkable job playing both an ignorant father who does not care for his daughter’s well-being and a cruel but stupid father who abuses his daughter.One enjoyable feature of the play that helps clear up some of the time period and scene location ambiguity was the quick monologues from the supporting characters before specific scenes about how Paganini entered their lives. These short speeches clearly inform the audience of where exactly the scene is happening, especially because the exact location and situation tend to change quite rapidly throughout theproduction. The Rice Players make great use of the stage, quickly transitioning between scenes and bringing out new and elaborate props, including ones from which members of the cast emerge, surprising the audience. While the lighting does a great job highlighting what is happening on stage without being too over- or underwhelming, it seems as if some parts of Paganini were heavily accented by a musical soundtrack, while others were surprisingly quiet. For a play that is centered around the life of a world-famous musician, it would be nice to have a heavier emphasis on the musical aspect.While the play is a bit lengthy, the entire cast of Paganini does an excellent job portraying a tumultuous cycle of emotions and situations. However, some scenes portray a little too wide of a range of reactions and feelings, which have the potential to confuse the audience as to what, exactly, the scene is trying convey. Paganini is being performed by the Rice Players Oct. 9-11 in Hamman Hall at 8 p.m. Student tickets are $5, faculty, alumni and senior citizens are $8 and general admission tickets are $10.
Singing clouds with faces, walking tree women and bowls of pasta that breed reptiles may be the stuff of nightmares, but there is something strangely satisfying about seeing such uncanny images unfold in real time. Creature Worlds, the latest video installation at RG Cubicle (also known as Rice Gallery video space), is both bizarre and intriguing. It’s the kind of art that makes you question whether or not you need hallucinogens to understand it properly. Situated to the left of Rice Gallery, RG Cubicle is a converted office space that now operates as a small theater. Eight to 10 gray foam cubes serve as seats for moviegoers, and the screen, which spans an entire wall, fosters an almost 3-D experience. Creature Worlds is a compilation of six short animated videos from professional working artists. Using simple techniques, such as stop-motion animation, each artist creates a universe full of creatures (both imaginary and recognizable) that move, grow, shrink, morph, disfigure and refigure to form unconventional patterns of evolution. Produced in black and white, KUNCHI is the shortest of the bunch. It is best described as a procession of biotic blobs, ranging from triangles with eyes to what appear to be walking mushrooms. The musical accompaniment, a series of dissonant xylophone sounds, is both upbeat and disconcerting. Cloudy, the longest of the six shorts, is also the lightest in tone. Created by FriendsWithYou, it centers on a factory in the sky in which singing clouds and smiling raindrops perform their “daily duties.” Although bizarre in conception, I found this short strangely satisfying. The harmony of tasks and happy music lend the film a productive and fulfilling feeling, like watching a video of Santa’s elves at work. Ever wonder what happens when you abandon a bowl of noodles for a minute? According to No Noodles, it erupts into a chorus of aquatic and prehistoric creatures. No Noodles is produced using claymation, which allows the animator to transform one creature into another in one fluid motion. The Leaf Woman and the Centaur serves as an expression of different creationist theories. Set against a black, cosmic backdrop, a mythical leaf woman is the creator whose seeds give birth to life in vibrant colors. Accompanied by a classical soundtrack, The Leaf Woman is both beautiful and expressive. In Dissimilated Vision, a single pencil line becomes a myriad of human features that morph from faces to hands to eyes to mouths. The takeaway is that the human form can be tactfully reduced to a series of similar and interconnected shapes. With dissonant, soft music, the film becomes eerie, but the sketches are simple yet elegant. Similar to KUNCHI, USAWALTZ features a parade of creatures in black and white, this time swimming across the scene as if trapped in an aquarium. The soothing, a cappella music is catchy and triumphant without being overwhelming. What is Creature Worlds but a picture of raw imagination? Although none of the mini-universes converge, they each capture some aspect of life beyond reality, something uniquely envisioned. When I stepped into the exhibition on a quiet Saturday morning, temporarily frozen by the utter pitch-blackness of the theater, I was at first skeptical. But, overwhelmed by such fantastic images, I had no choice but to dive headfirst into the bizarre and wonderful. Creature Worlds is on display in RG Cubicle through Nov. 23 during normal Gallery hours.
Since opening in 2012, Chris Shepherd’s Underbelly has arguably been the quintessential Houstonian restaurant. The menu, which boldly proclaims, “Houston is the new American Creole city of the South,” even won Shepherd a 2014 James Beard Foundation Award for its seamless integration of Houston’s many ethnic influences with traditional southern techniques. Shepherd is perhaps best known for his butchering and charcuterie which, at Underbelly, are embodied by an entire aging room and back-of-house butcher’s shop devoted to butchering, curing and aging the house meats. Shepherd’s expertise is nearly unquestioned in the realm of pork, beef and all things red meat. But in light of the growing number of gourmet diners and chefs moving away from the heavy use of red meat, I wanted to sample the menu without any la viande meats to see if Underbelly’s appeal could be as broad as its influences.Underbelly does have a significant amount of fish and poultry on the menu. There are even a few vegetarian dishes as well, but the restaurant is by no means vegetarian friendly. While some of the veggie plates — like the crispy market vegetables and spiced okra — are surprisingly good, other dishes — like the crusty slow dough bread with fig butter (which at most restaurants would have been complimentary) — are fairly unremarkable. Even the popular market vegetables, which tend to linger on the menu as other dishes are rotated out, are prepared with caramelized fish sauce, meaning they have to be specially prepared for vegetarians with a key ingredient omitted.For those simply looking to avoid red meat, however, there are a few more options. Though the menu frequently changes, there’s always at least one family-sized fish plate, usually a large portion of crispy-fried bycatch, and four or five smaller dishes centered on poultry and fish. The bycatch platter, a generous helping of three whole-fried snapper with eggplant and corn on the night I visited, was undeniably delicious but lacked anything to distinguish it from the other great fish platters that can be found around Houston for $30 instead of $60. Over-seasoned and salty, the triggerfish was even more disappointing. The seared snapper, on the other hand, surpassed even the pork dishes my party ordered, spiced with an excellent blend of southern seasonings and served with okra that was far better than the okra I’ve come to expect from creole establishments. The duck was also a surprisingly good example of Shepherd’s genre-bending abilities: the meat was cooked in the classic French confit style and served with not just candied pecans, but southern-braised collards that paired exceptionally well with the duck fat.Not surprisingly, Underbelly’s extensive wine list has many options, both red and white, that pair well with their lighter dishes. Although the sign at the door declares it “Riesling season” at Underbelly, the hard ciders and light red wines are far more complex and pleasant than the off-dry Rieslings, which pair poorly with even the lightest dishes. The French ciders’ crisp acidity is a perfect match for the greasier plates, like the bycatch and duck, and the light, fragrant Grenaches and Dolcettos, both available by the glass, are especially well suited to the other fish and vegetable plates. All in all, the meal was quite good even without Underbelly’s star ingredient. Shepherd may be a world-class butcher, but his menu proves that he’s a cook first and capable of serving some remarkable, if inconsistent, seafood and poultry. While Underbelly may still be a pork lover’s haunt, it can certainly deliver a satisfying dinner to those looking for something else.
Following their inaction in addressing Honor Council’s blanket tax status, the Student Association Blanket Tax Contingency Committee sent a request for documents and a written statement about the organization’s blanket tax on Oct. 5. The Contingency Committee has also made public their planned meeting dates and times (see p.1).
Rice’s neglected spaces are only neglected if you take human regard and human presence as the only measures of worth. Certainly sitting on a bench under a tree is pleasant, but if every tree has a bench, none of them is special. The introduction of benches or paving in the open or naturally landscaped spaces destroys the natural aspect of the space that is so essential to making it fundamentally different from the more formally structured spaces on campus. Follow a pattern of adding structure to spaces for convenience, and soon there are no empty spaces left at all, and the campus becomes one big parking lot or formal garden with no clear separation of one space from another.
As a 102-year-old institution, the Honor System is one of Rice’s oldest traditions. While we may think of privileges such as take-home and unproctored exams as the most direct, tangible benefits of this system, the Honor System means much more than that. The Honor Council and the Honor Code have been central in maintaining the academic integrity of the university. The system fosters a community based on trust and openness between the faculty and the student body. Ultimately, the Honor System upholds the integrity of the Rice degree and the university’s reputation. To be one of the few universities nationwide to have an entirely student-run Honor System, let alone an explicitly stated Honor Code, illustrates that Rice students are capable of handling high levels of responsibility.
A broken laptop saved my life this week. I didn’t know it at the time, but I was in desperate need of some time outside of Rice University. My eventual venture off campus gave me a vitally refreshing reminder that life still exists outside of Rice.
During the summer of 2013, Baker College junior Alex Sokolyk was at a dance camp. However, the dance camp was not in his home state of Texas, much less in the United States — it was in Ukraine, just before the escalation of the conflict with Russia.
Brown College’s fourth floor of the tower had persistent leaks two weeks ago from the ceiling in front of its elevator areas that lasted three days, according to Brown College fourth-floor representative Alex Cerda.According to Cerda, fourth-floor residents placed trash cans under the drips as a temporary solution because they thought the leaks were due to the rain. Cerda said because the dripping continued for two more days and both the trash bins and the large recycling bins were filling up quickly, fourth floor residents decided to contact Housing and Dining.Housing and Dining responded to the work orders and eliminated the leaks within one day, according to Cerda.“They responded right away; they saw it and they came and fixed it up, nice and fast,” Cerda said. “I think H&D did a good job once we contacted them.” According to H&D Senior Operations Manager David Brown, the source of the leaks was condensation from the air conditioning unit. Brown said these condensate drips can be caused by wear and tear of the air conditioning unit’s insulation.“We try to do our best [to] maintain these things, but that’s something that is really unpredictable,” Brown said. “There are certain things that we can do, like change the insulation.” Brown said insulating material on the air conditioning units may only last for long but will function effectively for 10 years after replacement. The college is scheduled for maintenance activities during the summer of 2015, according to Brown.However, the air conditioning leak was not the only problem that fourth floor had that day, according to junior exchange student Kimiko Nakajima.“The sinks were not draining at all,” Nakajima, a Brown College resident, said. “It was draining so slowly, you could actually see the whole thing getting filled up with water. You can’t really use it, because it’s almost going to be overflowing. The fact that they repaired [the clogged sinks] a year ago and it happened again means that they might [need] to make more serious repairs.”According to Cerda, the two events appear to be unrelated, as the leakage turned out to be a problem in the air conditioning unit and not in the plumbing. This is not the first time that similar plumbing issues have occurred. Last year, the men’s bathroom of the fourth floor had similar problems when the sinks filled up with stagnant water. “A lot of the problems we’re having are a result of a bunch of things stacking up on top of each other rather than just one big problem,” Cerda said. “I don’t think that extensive repairs need to be done, but I do think that over the summer or winter break, [H&D] should just gloss through everything.” Facilities, Engineering and Planning Manager of Communications Susann Glenn said she considers these events to be isolated cases.“With weather changes and with other factors, you never know what could happen,” Glenn said. “I would stress though that if [the students] have concerns, they can bring them to the student maintenance representative, who has authority to help fix things and facilitate the process faster.”
The Rice Management Company has hired Trademark Property Company to oversee asset and property management, leasing and repositioning of the Village Arcade in Rice Village. The Village Arcade, part of the Rice University endowment, is managed by the Rice Management Company, according to company president Allison Thacker (Baker ’96). “We have not made any decisions yet on plans for the Village Arcade, but we have hired Trademark to manage the property and help us plan for the long term,” Thacker said.According to Trademark’s website, the company will improve the Village Arcade by enhancing streetscape, landscaping, storefronts and facades.“Additional Rice-owned property in the Village (approximately seven acres) is available for future mixed-use development,” the Trademark Property and Strategic vision overview stated.Rice acquired the Village Arcade from its former owner, Weingarten Realty Investors, earlier this year. The Rice Management Company said they hope to have more specific plans for the Village Arcade in 2015.
Rice University has hired New York architecture firm Weiss/Manfredi to conduct a two-stage Student Space Study. The first stage of the study will investigate student space usage across campus, according to Vice President for Administration Kevin Kirby.“We are to look at how [the spaces] are used and where the deficiencies lie,” Kirby said. “We anticipate [the first stage] being done in the next few months, hopefully by the end of the calendar year, or early next year.”Kirby said the second stage of the study will focus on the Student Center and will address space usage, in addition to proposing changes and providing possible construction plans with different price points. The plans will also ensure the construction will not interfere with regular student activities. “We want to have [the results] by the end of the academic year,” Kirby said. “By May, we want to know what program we are going to have and what policy making should we change.”The administration has formed a Student Space Study Steering Committee which consists of student and administrative representatives. Student Association President and committee member Ravi Sheth said he has tasked college presidents and senators with gathering student opinions to best represent the undergraduate student body on the Steering Committee.“I have had our SA leadership assemble and analyze a wealth of survey data going back five years, with regards to student opinion around space use across campus,” Sheth, a Martel College senior, said. “This data, along with the opinions of student leaders, inform my representation to the Steering Committee.”The study includes interviewing and surveying students, touring walking spaces around campus and researching Rice Memorial Center reservation forms for how various rooms in the Student Center are currently used. “At the end of September, the architects visited campus and met with focus groups, including a panel of campus-wide organization leaders, the college presidents and college masters,” Sheth said. “Through these meetings, the collective student opinion was voiced and communicated.”Kirby said part of the funding for future construction comes from the money gained from selling KTRU’s broadcasting license in 2011. The university will fundraise further while conducting the study. “If we finish raising all the money next summer, it takes us about nine months to do the design and start construction and we can start maybe the following summer,” Kirby said. “But you almost never raise money that quickly.”McMurtry College sophomore Isabella Yang said she thinks the Student Center has good use of space but the fact that student events are divided into each residential college makes the Student Center less popular. Yang participated in a New Student Representative project about the Student Center last year.“In other universities, they have a pretty populated Student Center, since students couldn’t go elsewhere for events,” Yang said. “According to the surveys we collected from students, most want some more study areas; prices of all the stores should be lowered and it is recommended to get more study rooms there so that students can go for study[ing].”Martel College junior Nick Merritt said since the Student Center is a hub for students, the university should prioritize it when considering where to make improvements.“Coffeehouse sometimes gets too crowded,” Merritt said. “We should also improve the staircases in [the] RMC because the two stairs are very confusing.”
The Committee on Undergraduate Curriculum influences student curricular issues ranging from the creation of new minors to the archiving of syllabi on Esther. Student Association members who are representatives of the Committee on Undergraduate Curriculum are adopting a new practice this year and updating the SA after every CUC meeting, according to CUC Student Representative Nicole Moody.CUC Chair Susan McIntosh moderates the meetings. McIntosh said the CUC and the Faculty Senate, which is made up of only faculty members, often receive proposals simultaneously. Sometimes, problems are brought to the CUC by the Faculty Senate, but the CUC itself has also raised issues in the past, such as classroom size. “I ask the [Faculty Senate] senators or the executive committee to have a quick look [to see] if they have major issues right at the beginning, so that as we work on the proposal, we’re taking those into consideration,” McIntosh, a professor of anthropology at Rice, said. “That certainly would be the time that we would anticipate, as the proposal comes before the CUC, and our student [representatives] are aware of it, that they would be looking to make any suggestions for modification of the proposal.”Vice President of the Administration and Registrar David Tenney (Sid Richardson ’87) said the CUC oversees proposals regarding the undergraduate curriculum, including creation of a new major or new minor and distribution, transfer and advanced placement credit. Tenney serves as a non-voting advisor to the CUC and said he was involved in the add-drop proposal, as well as the creation of the neuroscience minor and the new Center for Civic Leadership certificate. Student Association President Ravi Sheth said the SA appoints four representatives to the CUC each year who are responsible for gathering and representing undergraduate opinion, as well as sharing the activities of the CUC with the undergraduate body. “While student opinion is certainly of utmost importance with any decision that affects the undergraduate curriculum, students should understand that any change to the curriculum is ultimately a decision left to the faculty,” Sheth said. “This is reflected in the current structure of the CUC: Students are well-represented in the process, but ultimately the final decision and authority lays with the faculty through Faculty Senate.”Moody said the CUC student representatives will give an update about the CUC after every meeting at Senate. “We’re trying to get thev word out a bit more, trying to be more open to the student body,” Moody said. “I think that’s been pretty effective.”University Court Chair Brian Baran was one of the student writers opposing the CUC’s add-drop proposal. Baran said the student representatives to the CUC are one piece of providing student input, but those students may not be able to represent every perspective in the student body without additional input. Baran said good communication depends on the SA executive committee as well."It's not just the CUC deciding when to provide information; it's also when the SA officers feel the need to bring something before the larger student body," Baran said. "There are choices both on the part of these faculty or university committees and on the part of the SA leadership that are involved in deciding when proposals come in from of the student body as a whole."According to McIntosh, the Faculty Senate recommends potential CUC members to the president, who appoints them, after which the Student Association is asked for nominations for student representatives. The CUC is further broken down into subcommittees, each of which has a student representative.CUC Student Representative Kristi Fu said she believes the CUC likes to have student input, but that the 90-minute meetings may not be long enough to achieve student input.“The meetings aren’t long enough to actually have sufficient input from everyone who wants to speak,” Fu, a Brown College senator and sophomore, said. “They have to get the agenda moving.“McIntosh said faculty members have difficulty scheduling times to meet as the CUC, which is why more frequent or longer meetings are not possible. She also said while some committees may not have faculty representatives from all academic departments, the committees try to contact all stakeholders. The committees also bring topics to the CUC as a whole, which has more representation. “We may end up hearing from engineering, for example, that their particular circumstances were not taken into consideration,” McIntosh said. “Then it’s back to the drawing board, and we work with the engineers at that point.”According to McIntosh, some issues that the CUC has addressed recently include a way to create international exchange programs for Rice students. Tenney said the CUC had also been working on a Rice Center for Engineering Leadership certificate.
Andrew Dessler (Lovett ’86), a professor in the Department of Atmospheric Sciences at Texas A&M University, gave an overview of the rhetorical practices used by climate change skeptics at the James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy on Oct. 1. Dessler said a small number of scientists are cited frequently by skeptics, giving the impression that there are more skeptical scientists than there really are. The idea of climate change as primarily human-caused is supported by 97 percent of climate scientists, he said.“There are so few of these [skeptical climate scientists] that they’re endlessly recycled,” Dessler said. According to Dessler, climate change skeptics put out alternative publications to share their ideas. However, Dessler said the body of reports supporting the science of climate change outweigh the relatively few skeptical reports. “There are so many of these reports written, and they all say the same thing,” Dessler said. “It is extremely likely that human influence is a dominant cause [of global temperature increase].”Dessler said it is unlikely climate change skeptics are motivated by money. “In the debate — on both sides — very few people are getting rich,” Dessler said. “People see the facts they want to see. Giving people facts is not the solution to this issue.”According to Dressler, the risks of rising temperatures make climate change a pressing issue.“I’m not sure [the effects of climate change are] going to be bad, but there are lots of ways it could be really, really bad,” Dessler said. Dessler said rhetoric that emphasizes doubt about climate change tends to delay policy changes that could stave off negative effects of climate change; however, scientific doubt of climate change is overstated “Everyone basically agrees,” Dessler said. Sid Richardson College senior Maddie Camp said she thinks it is important to examine skeptics’ viewpoints to make progress on climate policy.“Because climate change is really a policy issue, skeptics bottleneck the whole process of beginning to address climate change, so it makes sense to understand that barrier and think about how we can move past it,” Camp said.
President David Leebron presented on the state of the university at the Student Association Senate meeting Wednesday, discussing topics from long-term initiatives to changes in student makeup and priority, followed by a question and answer session.Leebron began his speech with an analysis of the mission statement and Edgar Odell Lovett’s vision of Rice as a place of both learning and teaching.“One of my favorite developments at Rice was the student-taught courses or college courses,” Leebron said. “I can’t think of many things that represent the philosophy of this university much more than that.”Leebron introduced his key ideas in education, including: logical evolution/revolution, changing value proposition, access and affordability, financial sustainability/research funding, sexual assault and campus climate, athletics model and rankings. Leebron continued on to describe the efforts of the students and administration on the sexual assault policy.“I think this has been a good area in which students and administration have worked together,” Leebron said. “It’s something we all have to take seriously and we all have to bring a Rice philosophy to it, which is this culture of care.”Leebron addressed Rice’s recent drop in Princeton Review’s quality of life and happiness rankings and said the control that students feel over their environment contributes to Rice historical performance in rankings.“We pay attention to [U.S. News and World Report rankings] and think about what we can do, but no we’re not going to do those things that violate our fundamental commitment, and that includes commitment to access to our education,” Leebron said.A few of the areas being considered after this year’s ranking release include the graduation rate, class sizes, and how well known Rice is.“The way U.S. News works, it makes a big difference between whether the graduation rate is 91 percent or 93 percent,” Leebron said. “That’s a big thing, and we ought to be better at that than everybody else. And we’re pretty good. We’re around a 90 percent graduation rate in six years.”Leebron said he had numerous priorities for the new century: strategic academic priorities, school investments, campus infrastructure investments, and administrative effectiveness and efficiency. School investment includes investing in overburdened departments such as psychology and economics. “When I went to school, people would say what we were paying for is what happens in the classroom and the grading of exams, a major, transcript, and degree, and that’s 75 percent of what I’m paying for,” Leebron said. “That 75 percent has been reduced in my mind to something like 25 percent.”Leebron said he stressed research and student leadership as integral parts of the Rice experience that should be given a formal and educational framework. New certificates are being created to reflect students’ efforts in a historical record after they have graduated.Since fall 2003, the student body has gone from 55 percent caucasian to 43 percent caucasian and Asian-American students comprise 26 percent of the student body, up from 15 percent. The international student population represents 12 percent of the student body; it represented 3 percent of the student body in 2003.“The most dramatic is the change in the diversity of the undergraduate student body,” Leebron said. “This particular calculation takes out international students, [who] don’t count as part of the diversity; they’re just international students. That gives you the sense of a very changed student body.”Duncan College Senator Louis Lesser asked Leebron about his four priorities for the new century and whether any of them were more pressing than the others“Those are a little more like buckets than priorities you have to pay attention to,” Leebron said. “Originally, the first formulation of this didn’t have [school] investments. When we saw the success that we had in economics, we realized that sometimes what the school most needs is not part of some university-wide vision: building a great economics department may be the next thing we need.”Leebron said he hopes to develop more interaction between the graduate and undergraduate departments, such as with the Jones school and the creation of the business minor. He said collaborations between the SA and the Graduate Student Association were also important in this process.
Seven Rice undergraduate professors from various departments began piloting two different in-class instant student feedback programs, Top Hat and Poll Everywhere, at the beginning of the fall semester. The end goal of these pilot programs is to select a standardized immediate feedback system to be used by professors across campus. Though the official Rice audience feedback brand has been Turning Point for the past five years, professors have individually branched out to implement various other student polling systems, such as iClicker, in their classes. The pilot programs exist due to professors’ expressed interest in moving towards a unified product at the end of last year, according to Carlos Solis, Assistant Director of Academic Technology Services.“Over time, faculty members have started using different products all over campus, and during a meeting with faculty members early last year, there was an expressed desire for standardization,” Solis said. “[They wanted] a product that is more flexible than what we have right now that will add capabilities that will serve instructional purposes of the faculty better.”Solis acknowledged that professors who have already become accustomed to using particular brand products, like iClicker, might have difficulties making a system transition over to Top Hat or Poll Everywhere. However, he said there would be a benefit for everyone to find one product to fit most people’s purposes. “We want to get to the point of standardization where students do not need to be carrying different clickers or applications on their cell phones or using one product in one class and another in one class,” Solis said. Rice IT identified products on the market and narrowed the choices down to Top Hat and Poll Everywhere after considering the systems’ features and reviewing feedback from other academic institutions and Rice faculty members who have previously used them, according to Solis.Having utilized iClicker in his previous classes, Professor of Physics and Astronomy Paul Padley is one of seven professors piloting one of these two programs.“If I just think about my experience as a professor, I would prefer iClicker [over Top Hat],” Padley said. “However, when I imagine the student perspective, I think Top Hat is better because of the [free] cost and the [reduced] burden of students losing their clickers.” Martel College freshman Jorge Whitley has been using Poll Everywhere in General Chemistry I, a class that has previously used iClickers for instant feedback.“Though I see where it might be useful, it seems to be used primarily as a method of taking attendance,” Whitley said. “I think the polling system itself is clean and easy to use. It’s a question with four answer choices and that’s it, but many of the questions asked in the class have more than one right answer, which can be frustrating given the single-response restriction.”If Rice transitioned towards using one of these systems, there would be no additional individual monetary cost for students beyond the single annual payment that the university would make for a site-wide license. According to Solis, the price of this annual payment is yet to be negotiated and will be largely determined by the choice of response system and the final total volume needed as dictated by the quantity of users. Both systems being piloted offer attractive, user-friendly features that add to the range of interactions professors can have with students, Solis said. “With your typical clicker, you can answer ‘A’, ‘B’, ‘C’, ‘D’ or ‘E’,” Solis said. “With these clickers, you can submit full-text answers, so you can have open-ended questions. There is also the opportunity to ask questions using images and point on the parts of the image for the different answers.” The range of interfaces on which these downloadable programs can be accessed gives professors more room to include all students in this immediate-response-mediated learning. “We do a survey at the beginning of the year that lets us know what students are bringing to Rice,” Solis said. “Students are, on average, bringing one laptop plus two to three wireless devices with them.”Sid Richardson College sophomore Sean Dilliard said he has tried multiple forms of feedback programs and is glad to hear that professors are using programs other than iClickers.“Considering the high cost I paid to make use of the technology once, maybe twice in my time during the class, I found the iClickers to be rather impractical,” Dilliard said. “While the use of iClickers is rooted in good intentions, to engage the class and increase interactions with the curriculum, their minimal use at such a high cost offsets most of their good. There are and always have been better alternatives to the clickers; I made use of them in one of my CHBE classes.”According to Solis, Top Hat and Poll Everywhere allow students to use specific applications that they can install on their phone, either iOS or Android. The programs can also be accessed through a browser on a phone, laptop or tablet. Student may also use text services and submit answers via SMS.The opinions of faculty members and students will have weight in the final institution-wide decision, according to Solis. In November, both groups will be invited to attend a presentation made by current professor users who will discuss their experiences with Top Hat and Poll Everywhere. “We feel that if we bring vendors to do a sales pitch to the faculty, we will get always get the rosy picture, and it is important to have the users present their experiences to make decisions based off of real-world usage scenarios rather than vendors’ self-serving interests,” Solis said. “Towards the end of the semester, we also want to survey the students in the classes where these products are being tested.” The IT department would like to act quickly after a faculty and student-driven choice is made. “We would like to have this decision taken care off so that by the fall of 2015 we can move forward with a unified system,” Solis said.
The Student Association Blanket Tax Contingency Committee sent Honor Council a request for documents and a written statement regarding the organization’s blanket tax on Oct. 5. The Contingency Committee compiled a list of questions for Honor Council, which the organization must answer in a statement by Oct. 20. According to the official statement released by the Contingency Committee, Honor Council must submit a budget for the coming year and documentation of the organization’s C-Fund and D-Fund. All registered clubs managed by students and overseen by a department have a C-Fund through which their funds are handled, and the D-Fund is used for specific activities within a department. Honor Council must also explain the amount of money spent at its annual changeover dinner, the reoccurrence of a rollover more than 50 percent, the importance of such a rollover to the organization and how a decrease in their blanket tax allocation would affect spending. According to SA President and Contingency Committee Chair Ravi Sheth, the Contingency Committee can recommend a decrease in funding to the Student Senate if Honor Council is found in violation three years out of a four year period. The new proposed blanket tax amount would then be placed on the ballot. However, Sheth said the current system is not feasible and does not encourage responsibility within blanket tax organizations. “Our current blanket tax processes are broken,” Sheth, a Martel College senior, said. “Lengthened, multi-year processes limit the agility and ability of student groups to respond to initiatives and new ideas; this year we are struggling to fund exciting and impactful initiatives such as Future Alumni Committee, Rally Club, Senior Committee or even Homecoming. Furthermore, these processes, in my opinion, do not encourage responsible usage of student money.”Honor Council External Vice-Chair Shayak Sengupta said the organization plans to work with the Contingency Committee to reach a viable solution. “The Honor Council looks forward to working closely with this new committee to resolve the blanket tax issue as quickly as possible,” Sengupta, a Will Rice College senior, said. “We hope to develop a feasible, transparent solution to the challenges that have arisen. Furthermore, we hope that this solution is fair and equitable, first and foremost to the student body and to all blanket tax organizations.” The Contingency Committee, which met on Oct. 3, had met earlier this year to address the concerns raised by Honor Council’s blanket tax review. However, the previous meeting was invalidated because it was not publicly announced, violating the SA Constitution. All information regarding the Contingency Committee, including future meeting times and locations as well as public documents, can be accessed at sa.rice.edu/btcc. The Contingency Committee will meet with Honor Council the week of Oct. 27 and is currently accepting public comments.
After the Rice University basketball team went 12-48 over the last two seasons, the athletic department hired Mike Rhoades, a former head coach at Randolph-Macon College and former assistant head coach for the Virginia Commonwealth University team, which made it to the Final Four in 2011, to be its new head coach. Rhoades helped guide VCU to a 26-9 record last season and a spot in the NCAA Tournament and is instituting his own system and training regimen, which includes the same training that the Navy SEALs go through.
The Rice University soccer team headed out on the road this past weekend to face two more Conference USA opponents. On Friday, the Owls defeated the University of Texas, San Antonio 3-0. Rice then traveled to face off against the University of Texas, El Paso on Sunday; the Owls lost to the Miners 1-0 in overtime. The Owls are now 7-2-2 on the season and second overall in C-USA with a 3-1 conference record.
The Rice University football team (2-3) defeated the University of Hawai’i on Saturday, Oct. 4, winning 28-14.
