Special Projects

Bright Star shoots for the moon, misses

Bright Star is a high-minded, intellectual film, if you can somehow translate "intellectual" into a lot of staring, a lot of breathing, a lot of silence and a whole lot of boring.One would think a film about Romantic poet John Keats would feature dialogue akin to that of a poetic master. But while Bright Star places an emphasis on Romantic poetry and beautiful scenes, it neglects essential elements of a good film, such as realistic character interaction and a plotline that actually develops.

Love Happens never ges off the ground

Someone, somewhere, is terrible at naming movies. If you wanted to see a movie about love, you would think Love Happens would be for you. Nope.Now, if you are looking for a movie about coping with death, then maybe this film is more up your alley. Love Happens is sure to attract groups of giddy females on a girls' night out or cute couples holding hands, all expecting a romantic comedy, but most will find themselves shaking their heads, slowly trying to wrap their minds around the train wreck they just finished watching. A better title for this movie would have been Death Clouds Your Life, But Flowers Can Help. I'm certainly not a professional, so when I can come up with a better title, you know there's something wrong.

Battlesows start season by downing rival Hanszen

After a relatively quiet first week, the powderpuff season took flight last weekend with a number of headline match-ups filling the slate. Two teams made their season debuts, as Wiess College took the field for the first time against Hanszen College and the Will Rice College-McMurtry College tandem squad made its season debut in a match-up with Brown College. While the focus of both of these teams was a solid start, it was the finishes that highlighted a highly-entertaining weekend of football. Both Jones College and Lovett College earned memorable victories over the weekend, each in suspenseful and unique fashion. And while the Jones-Sid Richardson College finish was one for the record books, it was not the focus of our Game of the Week. Wiess and Hanszen squared off on Sunday in a rivalry game that needed to play a few extra minutes before a winner was declared.

Online only: Rosa earns men's tennis singles title

Bruno Rosa did not get a chance to play in the men's tennis team's season-opener two weeks ago, but the senior made the most of his opportunity to shake off summer's rust last weekend. Rosa ended up on top of the singles draw at the 10th Annual Midland Invitational last weekend, winning five straight matches over the three-day tournament. Rosa, the tournament's No. 1 seed, opened up the Midland, Texas, draw by sweeping the University of Texas at Arlington's Dmitry Minkin and the University of Oklahoma's Ionut Beleleu. In the quarterfinals Rosa battled back to down Baylor University's Maros Horny 3-6, 6-4, 6-4 to set up a semifinal meeting with teammate Oscar Podlewski, a junior transfer from Elon University. Podlewski put up a solid audition for why he should crack the team's rotation, but Rosa bested the younger Owl 6-3, 7-6.

A glimpse inside Houston's mayoral race

With a little more than a month until election day, four mayoral candidates debated with each other at the Rice Memorial Center Wednesday night.

Football stumbles against another Big 12 foe

If you wanted to, you could say that the football team's game last weekend looked no different from the previous two. The Owls (0-3, 0-1 Conference USA) fell to 16th-ranked Oklahoma State University 41-24, their third-straight double-digit loss to run their season into an early hole. But the score was misleading, because the feeling of the game was vastly different than the previous exasperating losses against the University of Alabama at Birmingham and Texas Tech University.

New Recreation Center boasts bigger space, new equipment, myriad upgrades to facilities

Listen to Rice Sports Roundtable Discussion

This week the Thresher sports staff sat down and discussed what's happening in Rice sports. We thought y'all might enjoy listening in on our conversation about the golf team's historic tournament win, two cross country meet titles and what to expect from the football team this weekend. Enjoy!

KTRU Top 35: Week of Sept. 20, 2009

Letters to the Editor

Specific signals required for bikers

Families weekend begins

This weekend, parents will discover what their sons and daughters have actually been up to in college. Families Weekend began yesterday and continues through Sunday, allowing students and parents alike to experience what Rice and Houston have to offer.This year's Families Weekend theme is "Rice Students. Global Citizens.", according to the Office of International Students and Scholars. This theme is especially fitting, as the university has students representing more than 99 countries, Director of Reunion Programs and Special Events Jennifer Harding said. Rice also welcomed more than 900 new students this year, 13 percent of them international.

Commentary: Staying true to the Gray and Blue this weekend

The last time we saw the football team, they were hoisting a glistening Texas Bowl trophy to the sky, the crowning spectacle to an unforgettable season in which Rice grabbed its first bowl win in 58 years. The stars that night were big and bright, deep in the heart of Reliant Stadium.My, how time flies.

Endowment falls 18 percent

While Rice may not have lost as much as of its investments as other universities, its endowment still took a hit during the most recent recession. For fiscal year 2009, Rice incurred an 18.2-percent loss on the endowment's investment returns, worth about $838 million. The university also spent $215 million of the endowment, $55 million of which was recouped in endowment gifts, according to unaudited reports issued from the Office of the Vice President for Investments Treasurer.

Honor Council flaws highlight need for further modifcation

I was extremely pleased when I read about the recommendations of the Working Group on the Honor Council in The Rice Thresher two weeks ago ("Honor Council working group presents findings," Sept. 11). The council has had trouble keeping up with its caseload for a while, and the measures suggested could greatly alleviate the pressures on the council, allowing things to run much more smoothly.These changes, however, do not address some other major procedural problems with the Honor Council.

Online only: Golf team wins first tourney since 1997

The golf team got the season off to a hot start this Monday and Tuesday at the UTA Waterchase Invitational, scorching the field of 19 while notching their first tournament win since Head Coach Drew Scott (Wiess '98) was in school. The Owls took the invitational by two strokes over the host school, the University of Texas at Arlington, shooting a final round 286 (-2). Rice's cumulative score was 858, putting them six strokes under par for the three-round tournament.

Martel welcomes former ambassador to speak on India

In an effort to increase talks by notable speakers at the residential colleges, Martel College hosted Ambassador Swashpawan Singh last Thursday. Speaking to an audience of about 30, Singh, the former Indian ambassador to the United Nations, gave a talk entitled "The India Story: More Fact than Fiction," where he discussed his country's current success, in addition to its development and obstacles to becoming a world power.

Kazakhstan envoy speaks at Wiess

Thanks to the 2006 film Borat, the nation of Kazakhstan has quickly, if infamously, earned household recognition. However, unlike the film's hirsute and skimpily-swimsuited main character, Kazakhstan Ambassador to the United States Erian Idrissov, who spoke at Wiess College Monday, promoted a message of peace and progress. This talk was part of the James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy's partnership with the residential colleges.

International figures grace Rice with presence

Over the last week, Rice has been graced by the presence of a pair of highly-respected diplomats: Edrian Idrissov, Kazakhstan Ambassador to the United States, and Swashpawan Singh, former ambassador for India to the United Nations (see stories, pages 4 and 7). Meanwhile, it was announced that Muhammad Yunus, the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize winner, would be the commencement speaker at the 2010 commencement (see story, page 1).Even though the endowment may have dropped by double-digit percentages (see story, page 1), it is nice to see that Rice can still attract the kind of envoys and world leaders that make our university as prestigious as we've been led to believe. And yet that prestige was not on full show for Idrissov and Singh, who both spoke in college commons. Lacking the pomp and showmanship of the James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy - and all the perceived intimidation that students may feel when they gape at the building's imposing beauty - the ambassadors were instead treated to the dining facilities for the university's students.

Rec Center opens with a splash

After a year and a half of construction, the much-anticipated Barbara and David Gibbs Recreation and Wellness Center opens today at 2 p.m. The center more than doubles the square footage of the former Rec Center, and boasts a variety of new rooms, spaces and workout facilities that will be available to students, faculty, staff and their families, Director of Recreation Programs Tina Villard said.

Online only: Women's tennis opens in Midland

While the men's tennis team already had a weekend's worth of competition under their belt a week ago, the women's squad traveled to Midland, Texas, to begin their fall schedule at the Midland Invitational. The doubles duo of junior Varsa Shiva-Shankar and senior Rebecca Lin performed the strongest for the Owls, playing their way to the semifinals of the tournament. Shiva-Shankar and Lin began the tournament on Friday with a win over Amy Joubert and Shannon MacKenzie of the University of North Texas by a score of 8-5. With that win, Shiva-Shankar and Lin met the No. 3 seeds in the tournament, Carla Lindlar and Karolina Filipiak of Baylor University. Although Lindlar and Filipiak came in with a higher ranking and a day of rest after enjoying a bye in the tournament's first round, Shiva-Shankar and Lin handily won the match by a score of 8-2.