The Student Association announced at the student senate meeting on Sept. 17 the formation of four pods to examine different topics: LPAPs, election timelines, campus-wide announcements and calendars and the blanket tax process (see p.1).
Two weeks into the semester, I was sitting on McMurtry College’s fifth floor, on the verge of tears as I told my friend I felt overwhelmed. “You’re just ‘Sophomore-Tina’ again,” my friend told me. He had confirmed my suspicion that I was overcommitting again. Sophomore-me spread herself too thin due to a combination of exploring too many interests and having a fear of missing out. As I sat on McMurtry fifth, I knew I did not want to revert to my overcommitted sophomore-self. The next afternoon, I made a difficult decision and withdrew from a research opportunity.
In the 2012 presidential election, Texas ranked 48 among the 50 states and Washington in voter turnout. Since then, Texas legislators have enacted a series of regulations that many believe will suppress voter turnout. For example, did you know that you need one of seven select government-issued photo IDs to vote? If you didn’t, you’re not alone. Many people, Rice students among them, are not informed about the changes that have been made since the last general election. While it is not yet evident if these new laws will suppress voter turnout, it is important to understand them to make sure that your vote counts this November.
This past weekend, the Rice University volleyball team hosted a tournament in which the Owls won two games and lost one in their second invitational of the season. Rice began the tournament by sweeping Texas Southern University 3-0 on Friday night, followed by a loss to the University of Louisville 3-0 later in the day. The loss to Louisville put an end to a seven-game winning streak, giving the Owls their fourth loss of the season. The team came out on Saturday and won in their final game of the tournament against Stephen F. Austin University. The weekend’s play brought Rice’s current record to 10-4.
The Rice University football team fell short in their comeback attempt against Old Dominion University in front of 17,588 spectators on Saturday, Sept. 20 at Rice Stadium. Despite making a 21-point comeback culminating in a game-tying touchdown with just over a minute remaining, the Rice football team could not overcome the Monarchs.
This past weekend, the Rice University soccer team hosted and defeated the Air Force Academy Falcons for the first time in school history. In the 21st minute of the match, Air Force struck a crossed-in ball past Rice goalkeeper Amy Czyz to take a 1-0 lead. Just two minutes later, the Falcons added a second goal, giving them a 2-0 cushion early in the game. In the 30th minute, Rice sophomore Jenny Fichera fired a shot and found the top of the net, just avoiding the diving hand of the Air Force goalkeeper, making the halftime score 2-1 in favor of Air Force.
There’s no doubt Wiess Tabletop is an underdog in the Rice University theater world. With freshmen actors and student directors, Wiessmen have nowhere near the resources available to larger, more well-funded groups like The Rice Players or VADA. But perhaps the yearly tradition has left students with some secrets to the trade. With minimalist sets, general lighting and little to no tech, the opening comedy acts of the year had little to impress with other than the prowess of the individual actors. In spite of these limitations, the show satisfied, turning out consistent performances and a solid host of laughs. “Swipe Right,” written and directed by Ryan Deal and Mikali Khan, also with direction from Vicky Comesanas, kicked off the night. The subject material hit close to home — a spinoff of social media dating at Rice — and the acting was solid. Lead actress Laura Dickman performed exceptionally well, feeding the other actors onstage with her energy. Akash Ghosal conveyed similiar exuberance, jumping from his chair at one point to address the audience. “Murder by Midnight,” originally written by Jeff Goode and reinvented by Max Payton and Benjamin Laun, proved equally enjoyable. Telling the story of a classic bad detective who allegedly murdered as many people as he investigated, this act was entertaining, if not exemplary. Izzy Rodriguez, despite his obvious gender limitations, played a convincing woman, which stopped this act from disappearing in the shadows. “Chocolate Affair” by Stephanie Alison Walker tackled an interesting and difficult story — that of a mother balancing work life and family while coping with an eating disorder to boot. In the midst of comedy, this proved to be one of the more serious shows of the night, despite its fantastical imagery (think candy bars that come to life). Some of the blocking choices, by directors Yash Tarkunde, Kathy Wei and Marlene Rizo, seemed cumbersome at times, but it didn’t upset the scene as much as the somewhat awkward attempt to balance seriousness and comedy. Dealing with a delicate subject, the act was ambitious to begin with, perhaps too much so for the nature of tabletop, and it didn’t seem to settle well. Tabletop also offered Walter Wykes’s “Family 2.0,” directed by Kyle Adams and Ariana Morgan, Wayne S. Rawley’s “Controlling Interest,” directed by Josh Kaye, Greg Harper and Sam Gavenman, “A Noire,” written and directed by Molly Cisneros and Weston Novelli, and “Nude Scene,” or every actor’s worst nightmare, by Hadi Tabani, Andie Eikenberg and Matt Keene. As a whole, the directors made the best of a resource-limited situation. The show choices played to the strengths of the actors — the characters were either common archetypes or someone around the age of the actor playing the role. These two decisions simplified the complicated process of creating a show, perfect for getting the most out of an inexperienced person in any field, but especially theater. But with so many acts in such a short amount of time, Tabletop really only scratched the surface of its material. They baked a cake and just took a bit of the frosting. Rest assured, though, Tabletop isn’t going anywhere — Wiessmen have a formula, and they know what they are doing. A&E Editor Sophie Newman contributed to this article.
The sophomore album from a young, successful band is often the most important to their career arc and for good reason: The sophomore slump is a very real thing. Countless upstart indie bands, from MGMT to The Strokes to The xx, have received some degree of critical backlash for their second LPs, typically because they either changed nothing about their formula or they changed it too much. This is the stage set for alt-J, the Leeds-based folk and electronic crossover band that came out of nowhere in 2012 to win the Mercury Prize, the award given to best British LP of the year, for their debut album An Awesome Wave. alt-J made a name for themselves by playing a style of music that sounded completely alien despite being made up of familiar parts. The signature, unmistakable singing style of Joe Newman sits as the dynamic manifestation of the band’s sound. The drums, heavily reliant on floor toms, give the songs their consistent tribal feel. The synth parts, all worked out on Korgs and Mac applications, loop strange, buzzing tones together in strange rhythmic patterns. The lilting guitar lines sound like mandolins played by traveling minstrels. All of this combines to make alt-J’s music sound like it is decidedly not of this century, and it certainly struck a chord with listeners. Like them or hate them, there is no confusing alt-J for any other band. The row-your-boat style round-singing on their most well-known track, “Breezeblocks,” was one of the biggest moments of 2012 in music and sealed alt-J as an eclectic act and a band to watch. So how does sophomore record This Is All Yours stack up? Pretty well, actually. Like on An Awesome Wave, we begin with a largely instrumental intro, featuring ‘LaLaLa’ nonsensical singing. “Arrival in Nara” pits a solemn piano and subtle string arrangements against Newman’s softly cooing voice. “Nara” is classic alt-J, starting soft with slowly buildingdrum and synth parts, high ethereal harmonies rising from the back like a church choir into a crashing, anthemic breakdown. None of these tracks would have been out of place on An Awesome Wave.Then we get to fifth track, “Left Hand Free.” Reportedly written as a joke in response to the age old record-company-asking-for-a-catchy-marketable-single story, we get very traditional drumming, funky, bluesy electric guitar riffs, silly lyrics about picking up a girl in a bar (‘O-M-G gee whiz girl you’re the one for me’), and gimmicky horn and keyboard parts reminiscent of The Doors. In short, it sounds nothing like any other alt-J track. It is also one of the strongest songs on the album. Sharply turning away from their traditional style, making a goofy troll-song, these guys have managed to put together a catchy, inventive take on an American brand of music better than just about anyone else has this year. That’s because alt-J’s most common pitfall is attempting to be taken too seriously. Newman’s lyrics are difficult to discern, to say the least, a combination of his strange delivery style as well as his choice of words and syntax, but after consulting the lyrics sheet, we learn the songs are really about nothing. They work better as parodies of the nerdier Led Zeppelin songs, spinning medieval themes into electronic arrangements. There is no deep emotional catharsis, no political stance, no inventive storytelling. alt-J could take a lesson from fellow European weirdos Sigur Ros and sing in a made up language, and nothing about the band or why they are liked would change. So when they say the content of this song is a joke, it implies the other songs are supposed to be solemn, sobering affairs. But how seriously can one take lead single “Hunger Of The Pine,” which prominently features a Miley Cyrus sample (shouting ‘I’m a female rebel!’) alongside deeply wound, ultimately substanceless metaphorical lyrics like ‘Bedding with me you see at night / Your heart wears knight armour’? alt-J is a band about textures. They layer vocal harmonies better than anyone else out there, and they’ve managed to be coined by critics as a ‘folk’ act despite featuring synthesizers as their main instrument. But they are not a lyrics band. That isn’t to say the listener cannot feel deeply when listening to alt-J music, but it comes rather from the beauty of the arrangements.This Is All Yours is a consistent release with occasional high points. The female back-and-forth vocals on “Warm Foothills” are marvelous, the perfect center to a song that showcases numerous alt-J talents. The starkness of acoustic strummer “Pusher” makes you wish the group did more minimalism and held back on the over-produced, complex-to-a-fault tracks like “The Gospel of John Hurt.” Other moments are equally annoying, but they are few between an hour’s worth of typical alt-J fare, which is still pretty interesting music these days. The group certainly dodged the sophomore slump, but it’s unlikely the same formula will be as effective on a third LP. “Left Hand Free” suggests the group can maintain their identity while pushing the boundaries into other genres. So long as they don’t take themselves too seriously, I think we’ve got a lot to look forward to.
When I asked our waiter whether he preferred the lamb or swordfish, he told me, “That’s like asking me to pick a favorite kid.” Then, as only a father could, he described every last detail of the two dishes to help me make my choice. At Pax Americana, the new modern-American restaurant on Montrose, the passion and talent is evident. The entire wait staff has an exhaustive knowledge of the quickly-changing menu and Chef Adam Dorris (formerly of Revival Market) brings an adventurous approach uncommon for a restaurant touting itself as “American.” However, that’s not to say the food isn’t full of typical American flavors: Corn, pickles and “root vegetable mash” steal the spotlight from the menu’s more glamorous ingredients like wagyu beef and blue crab. Dorris displays a singular talent for pairing his most American ingredients like barbeque sauce and house-made pickles with elements like unfiltered olive oil, which lends the pickles an Italian flair, and charred garlic, which minimizes the sweetness of the barbeque sauce to a mole-like taste.The beverage program, lead by pastry chef Plinio Sandalio, offers a comprehensive selection of cocktails, beer and New World wines. Most of the beer is sourced from Texas, and the wine list is exclusively domestic, focusing on Washington Pinot Noirs and classic California Cabernets. Sandalio’s desserts match Dorris’s penchant for unique pairings: The hazelnut financier is paired with a scoop of remarkably good foie-gras ice cream, and the flourless cake is infused with negroni and topped with gin fizz foam and Campari gelée, making a wonderfully boozyparfait. The food’s most significant problem is that, while it’s never boring, some of the flavors can clash and detract from otherwise superb dishes. The same hazelnut financier that paired so well with the ice cream was also served with a duo of roasted figs that could have added to the dish’s flavor, but because of an odd choice of seasoning (salt, pepper, and cilantro) were better left off the plate.The edgy pairings that tainted some of the otherwise incredible dishes seemed indicative of Pax’s other problems. The food itself is truly innovative, but showcasing it on the menu, which at times sacrifices substance for trendiness, seems to be a bigger challenge for the restaurant. The strong focus on fresh and local ingredients undoubtedly improves the quality of the dishes, but also necessitates the menu be frequently changed, which can be a disappointment to those looking to have the same great dish they had on their last visit. Our waiter also informed us that the menu was centered on small plates that were meant to be shared. The “land” and “sea” portions of the menu, though, can be quite hard to share and are certainly not priced at levels that suggest small plates. Pax also offers a secret menu, which customers are told of after their first dinner. It’s another interesting addition, but given that the menu only offers 15 choices between dinner, dessert and appetizers, it’s a wonder they don’t make the additional options better known. The food at Pax Americana is good enough that most will find it worth a visit despite the frustrating trendiness and high prices. If the menu’s kinks are worked out, Pax could even rise to the level of big names like Underbelly and the other elite of the Montrose food scene. Dorris and Sandalio clearly have the talent: They just need to concentrate less on what’s fashionable and more on what’s flavorful.
In an email sent to the Rice Environmental Club on Sept. 3, Club President Hutson Chilton said the club would, among other initiatives and if members were interested, enact a campaign to encourage the university to withdraw from, or divest of, fossil fuel investments, following a trend at other American private universities.
Community Bridges, a service-learning fellowship program, is now looking to recruit fellows for the new year, according to Community Bridges Program Coordinator Kaitlyn Sisk.
The Working Group on University Responses to Federal Initiatives on Sexual Assault continues to seek student opinion on the new sexual assault policy, according to Associate Vice Provost Matthew Taylor. Taylor and Lovett College President Meghan Davenport, the student representative of the working group, gauged opinions at the Student Association Senate meeting on Sept. 10.
The James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy is seeking additional funding for its Middle East Center to expand research addressing the historic challenges the Middle East poses, according to Founding Director Ambassador Edward Djerejian.
The Rice University Police Department launched a new digital two-way radio communications system, marking the end of an extensive two-year collaborative endeavor between RUPD, Facilities Engineering and Planning and Rice IT. According to RUPD Chief Johnny Whitehead, the changes seek to improve communication across campus and with Houston’s Police and Fire Departments.Before the switch, which occurred on Sept. 9, the same radio communications system had been implemented for more than 15 years and presented multiple challenges for RUPD, according to Whitehead.“We had been experiencing some issues with scratchy transmissions and dead spots on campus,” Whitehead said. “[The old system] presented a safety issue to our officers.”According to Whitehead, the switch was also prompted by the City of Houston’s Police Department’s radio communications upgrade that went live last October.“In the past, we had communications with [HPD], but when they went to their new radio system, we lost the ability to communicate with them,” Whitehead said.The findings of a 2012 campus-wide radio study presented two options: building a new radio infrastructure on campus or going to a digital system. RUPD decided to join the city’s radio system, which was already in place, rather than begin an independent project.“The radio project team met with all the radio users on campus including FE&P, Athletics, Housing and Dining, and Transportation to identify their needs,” Whitehead said. “There was a consensus that only the public safety agencies, RUPD, Rice [Emergency Medical Services] and Environmental Health and Safety, should go to the new digital radios.”According to Deigaard, the new system also communication with on-campus departments as well as with off-campus public safety agencies such as the Houston Police and Fire Departments and the University of Texas Police in the Texas Medical Center.“It used to be that dispatch could only listen to one radio channel,” Deigaard said. “[Rice] is not a little stand-alone island anymore. We are now part of a large collective.”
The New York Times placed Rice University on a list of the most economically diverse top colleges, calculating a College Access Index based on the number of freshmen coming from Pell Grant families in recent years and on the net price of attendance for low and middle class families.Director of Student Financial Services Anne Walker said Rice is ranked 18th on Pell Grants in the country. “The Pell Grant basically goes to the neediest students,” Walker said. “These are extremely low-income families, and that has been kind of a tool to measure economic diversity. At schools like Rice, and those in our cohort [Consortium on Financing Higher Education], we have middle income students who still have excessive need.”Walker said because Rice covers 100 percent of unmet need, Pell Grant recipients get generous packages and have to pay little out of pocket to Rice.“We don’t package loans for them,” Walker said. “They’ll have a small work study, $2500, if they choose to use that.”However, Walker said the Pell Grant is not the largest part of the aid package.“The largest part of the package comes from Rice,” Walker said.According to Walker, if tuition increases and a family’s income has not changed, Rice covers the difference. However, she said if a family’s income goes up, or circumstances such as one child graduating college — making it so that a family no longer has two college students — change, then a family may not get as generous a package.“The expected family contribution takes in lots of things — income, kids in college, some assets, not many, but [if] the Expected Family Contribution is below, they’ll receive a Pell Grant,” Walker said. Walker said the Office of Financial Aid does not provide loans for families with incomes under $80,000. “Many of those families do not receive Pell [Grants], so we’ve said for us, low income at Rice means under $80,000,” Walker said.According to Walker, a lot of families look at their finances differently and each situation is unique. “Families that have high consumer debt, we don’t take that into consideration,” Walker said. “Families who pay for private high schools, we don’t take that into consideration. Families do have some costs, that when we’re looking at packaging them for aid, we may not consider, and rightfully so.”Walker said economic diversity means diversity in all areas for the Office of Financial Aid. “[It means] social diversity, racial diversity, ethnic diversity,” Walker said. Duncan College sophomore Iqra Dada said she is not surprised Rice is on the list, because demographically, she believes Rice has a lot of variety in students’ background.“[It’s] because of the amazing job the [Office of Financial Aid] does in making college affordable for low-income students,” Dada said.
Rice LoL ClubEach year, a few passionate Rice University students take the initiative to create their own clubs. This year, students have formed Rice’s first electronic sports club, called the Rice LoL club. According to Club President Tung Nguyen, the club has obtained approval from Assistant Director of Student Activities Julie Neisler and seeks to unite students across campus who play League of Legends.Nguyen, a Sid Richardson College junior, said the club currently has 108 members and has previously organized intramural events.“Our mission is to bring people with similar interests together through tournaments and similar events,” Nguyen said. According to Nguyen, last year, the Rice LoL club participated in ivyLoL’s open league and the collegiate star league, competitions in which the club plays groups from other universities. According to the ivyLol ranking website, last year Rice’s team was ranked fifth in its division, which contained 43 teams. Rice Smash CommunityLast semester, Brian Lee, the external vice president of Rice LoL club, created the Rice Smash Community, a Facebook community for Rice students who enjoy competitively playing Super Smash Bros., a popular fighting game on Nintendo video game consoles.According to Lee, a Jones College junior, the group currently has 64 members and organizes meetups and tournaments.“Our community exists to provide friendly competition for every skill level, from the newest players to the best players in the region,” Lee said. “A few of our members often attend the weekly tournaments run in Pasadena, and our sessions here are meant to help us stand up a little better against Mojo, the number one player in Texas.”According to Lee, the Rice Smash Community has no intentions of becoming an official club in the near future and currently exists solely for students to enjoy playing the game with other students on campus.
The cost for printing a standard black-and-white page has increased to $0.07 after remaining at $0.06 for a decade, Manager of Information Technologies Technical Communications Carlyn Chatfield said in a campuswide email on Sept. 9. Other printing charges remain the same.“The new charge begins on Sept. 15, 2014, and will allow Rice University to continue meeting the rising cost of printing in the colleges and other student labs,” the email states.The price increase is necessary for a sustainable budget, according to Director for IT Business Services and Planning Yemeen Rahman.“Our goal is to maintain a printing budget which can sustain printers, supplies, maintenance and support,” Rahman said. IT Director for Systems Architecture Infrastructure and Cloud Strategy Barry Ribbeck said the increase is due to a larger student body.“Three years ago, we began evaluating options to outsource the lab printing service, but thus far, the projected expense to the students is higher,” Ribbeck said.
The three major Rice University wireless networks, Rice Visitors, Rice Owls and Eduroam, crashed due to software failure, according to Director of Rice Networking, Telecom and Data Center William Deigaard. “It went down in a strange way,” Deigaard said. “The three major SSID that we offered [were] all completely down, which is incredibly rare.”According to Deigaard, Rice uses thin-client centralized control architecture, which means two pairs of controllers serve as the brains of more than 1500 wireless access points on campus. “There is some large, powerful equipment that lives at the [center] of the network,” Deigaard said. “All the access points around the campus are connected to [the controller and] if that crashes, it can take down a very large number of access points.”Normally, the crash of a controller can be remedied by moving access points from the crashed controller to the other controller in the same pair, but in this crash, a software bug paralyzed both controllers. Deigaard said network engineers worked through the night of Sept. 4 to upgrade the wireless controller to a newer version. “We patched it to the newer version the next morning,” Deigaard said. “It took longer than we hoped, [but[ we have been stable since [Sept. 4].”Rachel Gray, a Lovett College junior, said she thinks the performance of the wireless network is not as satisfying as last semester. “The Wi-Fi has been more unstable than my ex-boyfriend,” Gray said. “Jokes aside, I’ve had more problems with it this semester than previous semesters. I haven’t personally noticed a decrease in speed, but the communication will drop suddenly.”According to Deigaard, having many users in one area consuming too much bandwidth can lead to a spotty Wi-Fi connection.“If moving improves [the connection], then congestion was likely the issue,” Deigaard said. “If, however, people find particular areas that never work, we want to know that. When folks have issues like this, they need to bring the machine to [IT Helpdesk] or our networking team can take a look.”Lead Student Computer Consultant at the IT Help Desk Galen Schmidt said the most common issues he sees for Wi-Fi problems are bad drivers and bad certificates. “The drivers for Windows 8 and Windows 8.1 weren’t very good when they were released,” Schmidt, a Duncan College senior, said. “Updating the drivers helped in many cases....Some of the updates to Macs have caused certificate problems.”
Two weeks ago, Duncan College Senator Louis Lesser, Duncan President Mary Anderson and University Court Chair Brian Baran introduced legislation in response to a drop limit proposal by the Committee of Undergraduate Curriculum. In light of student concerns and the CUC’s changing attitudes, the team is pursuing a new focus for their legislation, according to Baran, a Duncan College senior.Baran said the CUC has acknowledged the student body’s rejection of its original proposal and has suspended it.“It sounds like the CUC has heard from multiple sources of student opinion … and basically there is no longer any support for the original CUC proposal,” Baran said. “That proposal is effectively dead.”Despite the fact that CUC is no longer considering its original plan, Baran said it is still necessary to put forward formal legislative action.“Ultimately, the idea is that the Student Senate and the student body still have strong opinions on this issue, and this is certainly an issue that needs to be discussed,” Baran said. “It’s still important to have a lasting record of students’ views on it.”At the Student Association Senate meeting on Sept. 2, where the legislation was tabled, SA President Ravi Sheth said the wording of the proposed legislation might be antagonistic. “This is one of the most aggressively-worded pieces of legislation I have seen in my time in the SA,” Sheth said. Lovett College President Meghan Davenport said she is concerned about the message the legislation is getting across. “I think, as it is written right now, this just sets us up as putting out aggression when we just need to start a conversation,” Davenport said.Baran said he, Anderson and Lesser are hoping to present and pass an amended version of the legislation at the next SA meeting.“For next week, [Lesser], [Anderson] and I will be going back through the legislation and making amendments to get it in a form that can pass the Senate,” Baran said. “I am optimistic [about that].”Baran said he understands the pertinence of the problems caused by students holding onto courses they are not intending to take. According to Baran, he, along with Anderson and Lesser, will explore different approaches to tackling the problems in a manner more specific than the suspended CUC proposal.“We wanted to come up with some concrete alternatives that would better solve [problems caused by students not dropping courses promptly],” Baran said. “Unlike broader issues … changes to the add/drop policy are something that can be implemented quickly and that can make an immediate impact to that particular kink in the process.”Davenport, a senior, said she wishes to see more discussion between the students and the faculty in working out alternative solutions. “I hope that the [SA] appropriately expresses our desire to continue working with the faculty senate and the CUC in order to come up with a solution that works better for everyone involved,” Davenport said.
