Special Projects

Meet the new Wiess masters

Three colleges have picked new masters, who will start their five-year term in the 2011-2012 school year. Will Rice College chose Associate Professor of Sociology Bridget Gorman and Mike Reed; Wiess College chose Associate Professor of History Alexander Byrd and Jeanette Byrd; Jones College chose Associate Professor of Linguistics Michel Achard and Melanie Achard. Each week we will feature the new masters of an individual college.

Sanctum fails to trump Avatar's effects

Sanctum, like Transformers, is one of those movies that would have been far improved if someone took out all the people and dialogue of the film. While the unknown Alistair Greirson (Kodoka) directed the film, you would not know it with executive producer James Cameron's name all over the promotional material. While this is an obvious ploy to link Sanctum with award-winning Avatar's technological superiority, the tasteless acting and plot made the film subpar.Sanctum's plot concerns a group of people who get trapped in the largest unexplored underwater cave in the world in Papua New Guinea. The leader of the expedition, Frank, (played by Richard Roxburgh, Van Helsing) first attempts to direct the group out of the cave by following it deeper to the ocean, but he not only has to contend with nature but also the irksome emotional problems of everyone else. His son, Josh (Rhys Wakefield, Broken Hill), just wants Daddy to love him. Billionaire Carl (Ioan Grufford, Fantastic Four) believes he is far more experienced than he actually is, while his girlfriend Victoria (Alice Parkinson, Where the Wild Things Are) will not stop crying. Last but not least, "Crazy George" (Dan Wylie, Chopper) is Frank's volatile assistant. The rest of the movie consists of spelunking in increasingly dark places. It did not take long for me to start wanting every character to die a horrible and gruesome death, and luckily, many of my wishes were realized.

News in brief: RMC renovations planned

RMC renovations planned

Letters to the Editor

I was pleased to read the extensive coverage of RESET projects in the Jan. 28 edition of the Rice Thresher ("RESET Projects Innovative"). After just one semester, RESET is already a great success, leveraging $15,000 from the student fee to fund more than $40,000 in conservation projects thanks to matching funds from the Facilities, Engineering and Planning Energy Steering Committee (incorrectly attributed to Housing & Dining in the article). As illustrated in the article, this is a shining example of student, faculty, and staff collaboration. Behind the scenes, the FE&P Energy Steering Committee is working on more than $200,000 in fast payback utility conservation projects, including a new pump in the central plant, and better controls in multiple buildings to help reduce over-cooling. In addition, H&D is implementing several conservation projects as well, from window tinting at Wiess College to high-performance, low-flow showerheads to motion sensors in common areas. I encourage members of the Rice community to consider submitting a RESET project proposal this spring. The deadline is April 8, and further details are available

Baker Institute essential to campus

Congratulations are in order for the Baker Institute's most recent accolades (see story, page 1).The institute, which made the top 20 global university think-tanks and top 30 national think-tanks in a recent ranking by the University of Pennsylvania, has made quite a name for itself in just under two decades of existance.

SA General Election VOTE 2011

2/7/2011: The following pdf with SA general election campaign statements has been updated, so be sure to download or view this newer version!Go here to read the campaign statements for all the candidates.

Beyond The Hedges

National

This week's Editorial Cartoon

Men's basketball treads water in conference play

With the top seven teams in Conference USA separated by a single game, even the shortest of win streaks can turn a season around. For the men's basketball team, such a theory was applied last week when back-to-back wins over the University of Central Florida (14-6, 1-6 C-USA) and the University of Houston (11-11, 3-6 C-USA) put the Owls within a stone's throw of the conference leaders. But when Southern Methodist University (17-5, 6-3 C-USA) brought its own two-game winning streak to Tudor Fieldhouse last Saturday, only one team would be able to continue on its rapid ascent in the C-USA standings. Unfortunately for Rice, the weather was not the only thing in Houston that cooled down this past week.

Provost's plan goes forward

Provost George McLendon chose three task forces last semester to carry out the Rice Initiatives by determining the university's academic focus for the coming years. The task forces ended last semester by writing three white papers - documents that summarized their work thus far and laid foundations for the next phase of their project. This next phase included a call for greater student input and collaboration with the faculty members of the task forces.When McLendon helped form the Biosciences and Human Health, Energy and the Environment and International Strategy task forces, he said he gave them the collective mission of identifying areas across the university where Rice could achieve preeminence and be one of the top places in the world for research and education. The task forces polled Rice's faculty to determine what interdisciplinary themes they thought were most important and then narrowed those ideas down to a few areas that each group then highlighted in their white papers.

General election deserves good turnout

There are few times when we as students have a chance to really voice our opinions, and voting in the Student Association elections is one of the easiest opportunities to contribute (see insert, page 9).While the Thresher commended the student body two years ago when it set an record turnout in the general election with 1,610 votes, the number of voting students has declined dramatically since the SA switched to an online voting system in 1996, with a mere 972 students voting in last year's election. Whether this is the fault of the elections committee, heightened student apathy or technological barriers is not for us to say; rather, we encourage students to match - nay, demolish - the record set in the 2009 elections.

Baker Institute Student Forum debate: Humanitarian intervention needed

Foreign policy discussions always seem to be framed in the same way: On one side, the faction of greater American involvement in some region and, on the other, the faction of pulling back or ?avoiding entanglement.In fact, though, this is completely illusory. The choice of non-involvement in humanitarian matters is no longer before the United States and hasn't been for years. As hegemon, the U.S. is the world's policeman - that is the nature of its position. And who would wish it otherwise? The point of amassing such power is to use it for good.

McMurtry crest design draws on symbolism, college culture

McMurtry College's crest committee unveiled its final crest design Tuesday during the college's town hall meeting. The crest design, which prominently features a Scottish and Celtic theme, includes symbols such as swords, a conch shell and a "lion rampant."The crest committee consisted of McMurtry seniors David Sorge and Julia Botev, sophomore Anna Handelman and freshman Colby Sieber. Sorge said the crest committee was commissioned by the McMurtry McMinistry at the beginning of the fall semester. He said that, while Botev, Handelman and Sieber formed the more artistic part of the committee, with Sieber being the main graphic artist, he considered his role as more involved with background research of heraldry and creating a timeline for completion of the crest.

Women's track throws and vaults to victory

Be patient. Don't speed up too fast. Get to my mark. Focus on pushing my hands. Up in the air - push off the top. In the couple of seconds of every vault for senior pole vaulter Ari Ince, that's all that goes through her head. Clearly Ince has the quick steps to clear a bar 13-odd feet in the air down to a science.

Online only: SA General Election presidential debates 2011

Student Association presidential candidates Georgia Lagoudas, Adrianne Waddell and Erik Tanner/Daniel Hays debated Monday night following the SA meeting. The debate was moderated by Thresher Creative Director Dave Rosales. Unless denoted by quotation marks, answers have been paraphrased for conciseness.

Last week's online poll results

Baker Institute Student Forum debate: U.S. intervention long missing

Following the self-inflicted death by fire of a young man in Tunisia that sparked a revolution and drove the dictator-president Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali into exile, six men in Egypt, Mauritius and Algeria have immolated themselves, trying to incite similar riots in their countries. The movement in Tunisia has yet to take on a clear leader, but the original protesters were college educated and middle class, who were outraged and blaming a corrupt government for the lack of opportunities available in their country. While open revolt has yet to break out in other African nations, tensions are high and the United States cannot afford to ignore or be surprised by the situation. China has invested billions in Africa while placing no conditions for respect of human rights upon its investments and, consequently, has gained access to many resources and developed a growing sphere of influence.

A world without Islam

Fourteen hundred years ago, the prophet Muhammad began receiving revelations from God that led to the creation and subsequent rise of Islam in the Middle East. But what if Islam had never come to be? Author Graham Fuller, the former vice chair of the National Intelligence Council and a former CIA Station Chief in Kabul, argued that the relationship between the West and the Middle East might be remarkably similar to how it is today.Fuller, who spoke Jan. 27 at the James A. Baker Institute III Institute for Public Policy, said that even before Christianity, there were conflicts between the East and West - such as the wars between the Greeks and Persians - and the relationship between the Western Church in Rome and the Eastern Church in Constantinople deteriorated over time. When the two finally split, Fuller said that, despite the official religious explanation, the real causes of the split were similar to those he said have led to the current conflicts between East and West - not religion, but factors like politics, economics, power, geography, imperialism, colonialism and intervention into the Muslim world.

Photo: Third time's the charm

Senior Rebekka Hanle prepares to return the ball in a match against Texas A&M-Corpus Christi on Jan. 18, which Rice won 7-0. The Owls face Houston tomorrow to try and earn their third win.

Sports notebook: Women's tennis splits matches, Football hauls in 19 new Owls

Women's tennis splits matches