We set out to do some quick investigative reporting on the new south-campus steamy topic - the rocket-shaped cylinder protruding from the middle of old-Wiess field near the South Servery. You know what we are talking about - the 10-foot high pipe that blasts a white mushroom cloud of gas into the air just about every lunchtime. Is it poison? Is it radioactive waste? Is it a rocket ship manned by maniacal squirrels (see editorial cartoon)? A quick search for "construction" at www.rice.edu reveals that the cylinder is, in fact, an exhaust vent for the steam running through the newly-installed underground tunnel running to the South Plant. Workers are apparently testing the tunnel's integrity, and in order to do this, they have to release the built up steam so they can get inside.
On Tuesday, Aug. 26, hundreds of students, faculty, associates and others paid tribute to Emma Hutchinson, daughter of former Brown and Wiess College masters John and Paula Hutchinson (see story, page 12).Emma spent 12 years - more than half her life - as a member of the Rice community, and she touched the lives of many, as she spent much of those years in the Wiess and Brown masters houses. A ubiquitous presence at many collegiate events, Emma will be missed by her family - both immediate and collegiate.
"I want you to be nice until it's time to not be nice." Those words originally came from the actor Patrick Swayze as James Dalton, the soft-spoken bouncer with a degree in philosophy, instructing new subordinates in the 1989 B-movie Road House. However, they could also easily be applied to this year's presidential election. With his selection of Senator Joe Biden of Delaware as his running mate, Barack Obama has shown that he recognizes - as the contest has taken a predictable negative turn - the Democratic ticket's need for the ability not to be nice.
The third time's a charm for the Rice common reading program. Students gave the nod to this year's discussion of Three Cups of Tea: One Man's Mission to Promote Peace . One School at a Time, by Greg Mortenson and David Oliver Relin, agreeing that this year's format and its once-debated selection contributed to its success over the attempts of the last two years. "This year, the committee put a lot of effort into a book that would appeal to lots of different kinds of people, without being Harry Potter," Student Director of Orientation Megan Hermance said.
Summer is a time of endless possibilities. Everyone I know found a different way to stay busy after school ended, and a way to stay entertained away from work. Some of my friends watched television or held movie marathons; everybody went to see The Dark Knight. We argued about Heath Ledger and worshipped Michael Phelps. A couple of people I know even read books.Not many, of course. Reading is a lost art, a means of entertainment going extinct in the electronic age. The average American reads something like four books a year, all of them written by Stephenie Meyer. A quick search of the Thresher online archives reveals a grand total of one book review. In other words, the number of book reviews ever published by the Thresher is probably lower than the number of freshmen who didn't even open this year's summer reading.
With yet another Orientation Week come and gone, it is time to sit back and take a look at one of the annual points of debate: the common reading program (See story, page 1). From our point of view, the common reading for this year was a success. Without the results from the formal survey to back it up, we cannot absolutely confirm our conclusion, but the general consensus indicates that most new students and advisors found the common reading to be an engaging experience.We believe several program changes are responsible for the positive response. First of all, the book itself was more engaging than the previous years' choices. Three Cups of Tea is a story written in a style that has more in common with a leisurely read than an academic seminar. While it is by no means a simplistic or childish work, it is of a level well-suited to students working it into their summer vacations. For the common reading program, this meant that more students finished the work than would have otherwise, especially if it had been an academically dense scholarly article, instead.
Two seasons of falling short of an NCAA tournament berth and months of intensive off-season training culminated in an exciting opening weekend for the soccer team. With convincing wins against Sam Houston State University and University of Texas- San Antonio last weekend, the squad sent a message to the district and the nation. "Any time you get two home openers, you are hoping to start with a 2-0 record," head coach Chris Huston said. "The girls did fantastic."
Look, I know we were all freshmen once, but I think it is time we be reasonable, time we be honest with ourselves, time we sit down and say, "Enough is enough - we hate the freshmen." Every year, a wave of greedy-eyed, overzealous freshmen swarm in like gold prospectors and either steal or ruin all Rice's valuable resources and perks, which are naturally meant for the use of the upperclassmen. With their sophomoric antics (no offense, sophomores) and sociopathic, type-A personalities, these freshmen annually reduce Rice to a state of martial law: Every fall, freshmen create Soviet-era queues at the bookstore, turn Autry Court into a zoo, overrun our precious sports fields, steal all the good study spots on campus, occupy every single Fondren Library computer the one time I desperately need to print out a document, get ridiculously drunk and then puke directly outside my door on Friday night . like they do every year. Not that I am bitter.Isn't the freshmen progression slightly too predictable? Each fall we witness a bunch of cocky little runts inundate the campus, flood every useful facility, ruin college aesthetics with their haughtiness, take all the KTRU bumper stickers so I can't even find the yellow letters necessary to spell "Zach is a stud," act like idiots on the weekend, slowly lose their zeal for life due to the horrors of orgo and physics classes, generally make stupid decisions and total fools of themselves and ultimately fail to rebrand themselves as something other than the pathetic geeks they were in high school. It is not until Christmas that things return to normal, i.e., when conversations are no longer routinely punctuated by a prepubescent voice behind you squeaking, "That's what SHE said!". or more accurately, not squeaking anything at all, but rather silently thinking similarly-perverted thoughts behind an awkwardly blank look. Those socially backward freshmen.
Along with new faces and new buildings around campus come revamped services for students looking beyond their Rice years. The Career Services Center, which counsels students on how to position themselves in the graduate and professional world, changed its name this year to the Rice Center for Student Professional Development. The first version of its new Web site, which will launch in Sept., will show this year's changes in the mission and structure of career services. Future versions of the site will include innovative software for job and internship exploration. CSPD Director Erik Larsen said the changes in career services will chiefly involve an online networking system that promotes meaningful exchange with potential employers. The Web site is planned to go beyond brief job listings and instead serve as an interactive career research forum. New software, which is being developed exclusively for Rice students by an external firm, will offer a chance for personal dialogue between students and employers.
A fractured team without a home: this is an image of the 2007 soccer team that the Owls are trying to put behind them. On the field the first steps towards redemption came with a filled depth chart, and off the field, the Owls have found a new home after Autry construction stripped the team of a locker room in 2007. "In order to improve the future of Rice and other sports, it's one of the sacrifices that needed to be made," senior captain Christine Petric said. As the season began, the team found that the sacrifice, while seemingly inconsequential for on-field performance, was taking a toll on the team.
Orientation Week is the only week of the year in which on-campus residents are expected to follow a strict dry policy, meaning that they will not consume alcohol from midnight the Saturday prior to O-Week to the following Saturday at noon.But it appears a group of students this week did not bother to read the fine print. Assistant Dean of the Student Judicial Program Don Ostdiek confirmed that a group of students participated in a party earlier this week.
A sociopathic clown. A drunken billionaire adorned in titanium alloy. Construction workers committing suicide. Sounds like the plot of a really hot porno, doesn't it? If you didn't recognize them, those were just a few of the numerous highlights that dominated the box office this memorable movie season. Every summer, Hollywood churns out a slew of mega-blockbusters full of glitzy special effects, mind-numbing explosions and gunfights. This past summer was no exception.The 2008 summer box office was ruled by superheroes: Iron Man, The Incredible Hulk, Hell Boy II, Hancock and, my personal favorite, The Dark Knight. As an obsessive-compulsive movie-watcher, I had several amazing - and not so pleasant (Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants 2) - cinematic experiences. So let's get started .
While students were gone for the summer, visitors flocked to Rice through the latest addition to the Rice Web site: a virtual tour of the university designed to present the brighter sides of campus to alumni and prospective students.The tour, which was put online July 11, features 360-degree views of 16 sites at Rice and in the surrounding area, from the Sallyport entrance at Lovett Hall to the middle of a baseball game at Reckling Park. The tour also features a shot of Rice Village to give new students a glimpse of life beyond the hedges. Visitors can drag the image around to get a complete picture of the sites.
Many of us have been following the case of former Rice student Matthew Wilson, who disappeared last December and was found Aug. 13, 2008 in Berkeley, Calif. (See story, page 1.) Wilson was recently charged with theft of University of California-Berkeley property, but the charges were dropped. At the moment, he has been placed in a mental hospital on suicide watch.With all the media coverage surrounding Wilson, it would be easy to spin every bit of minutae into an overblown media sensation, but the fact is that we don't yet know why Wilson dis-appeared, and until we learn the facts, all we can do is remem-ber that he once was, and still is to many of us, a fellow Rice student.
The start of the school year means different things for different people. For new students and freshmen, this week marks the beginning of their "adult" lives and a slew of experiences, both good and bad, that life brings. For seniors, a new school year translates to the beginning of the end, one last hurrah in the final year of college and a brazen effort to maximize the potential for fun while attempting to secure a semblance of a stable future post-Rice.But for me, the beginning of the year means something else as well: another year of garnering and showcasing student opinion and thought. One of the great things about Rice is the diversity of its students and the experiences they bring to the academic and social table. With so many intelligent people who possess an endless variety of backgrounds and views, student opinion should be flowering - and flooding my inbox. Sadly, this is not the case.
While students and faculty may have been taking a break for the summer holidays, it appears internet scammers have been hard at work. Since February, there have been 14 rounds of phishing attacks, which led to a massive Rice e-mail blacklisting from several major e-mail providers this summer. An estimated 12 students, faculty and staff this summer volunteered their personal e-mail information to the fraudulent requests.Phishing, which can happen not only through e-mail but also via telephone, is the act of attempting to get a person's personal information. By obtaining a person's password and user identification to a university e-mail account via phishing attacks, scammers can access that account and can use it to send fraudulent messages to other e-mail services. Because many e-mail providers have relatively strict spam filters, scammers look for university webmail e-mail addresses, which are seen as legitimate, Information Technology Security Officer Marc Scarborough said. This way, scammers can send more e-mails through these accounts and increase their chances of getting money from their message recipients.
