Special Projects

New ESTHER policy in place

To prevent ESTHER from crashing during registration this semester, three changes were made to the registration process. Three registration start times were changed to three 20-minute intervals per day and were applied Monday through Friday. Registration also started at 7 a.m. instead of 8 a.m., and in-progress hours were no longer included in determining a student's eligibility for registration, Registrar David Tenney said. The three time slots were created due to concerns that the load on the system during the first few minutes of registration each day could cause it to crash, Tenney said.

This week's A&E Cartoon

Freshman wins electric car

Move over electric slide; Lovett College freshman Josh Rutenberg, winner of the Miles Revolution Contest, is dancing to the hum of an electric car. The contest, hosted by the Miles Electric Vehicles company, which manufactures fully electric vehicles, awarded a $1,000 scholarship to a student based on which entrant's video, centered on the electric car, received the most views on YouTube. Rutenberg's three-minute video trumped the other 14 competing videos by gaining 20,000 hits by the end of the competition in March. In addition to providing Rutenberg with the scholarship, the company presented a ZX40S electric car to Rice University.

Golf falters to 17th at Morris Intercollegiate

Two weeks ago in Austin, Texas, the golf team played against one of their toughest fields yet, posting a 17th-place finish at the Morris Williams Intercollegiate. Along with the stiff competition, the tournament boasted the University of Texas Golf Club's long course and windy conditions, two factors that combined to produce a disappointing finish for the Owls. The Owls head to Wallace, N.C., to play in the River Landing Intercollegiate, the team's penultimate tournament of the year, hosted by North Carolina State University. The field at River Landing Country Club will include Duke University, the University of Virginia, Wake Forest University and the University of Maryland. Though the Owls do not have a chance of making the NCAA Tournament as an at-large team, they still look to finish strong and possibly earn an automatic bid at the conference tournament.

Streaking offense carries Owls through homestand

Over the last nine-game homestand, the men's baseball team proved it could play without its top two aces, juniors Ryan Berry and Mike Ojala, who are still out with arm troubles. Actually, the Owls (22- 7, 7-2 Conference USA) did more than play: The team went 8-1 and won two weekend series against C-USA rivals, taking two of three from the University of Memphis and swept Tulane University. Those conference series were interspersed with wins over Dallas Baptist University and Sam Houston State University. With this record, Rice is sporting its best start since 2004. The Owls have jumped up in the rankings, as well, with five different polls putting Rice in the top six. Baseball America ranks Rice third, while Rivals.com has them in first. Rice is also holding down second place in the C-USA standings, a game behind East Carolina University.

Inadequate health plan needs greater improvements

Ed. note: This article has been changed from the printed version.In a 2008 study of graduate students on the Rice-subsidized health plan, 97 percent of over 400 respondents were unhappy with the plan coverage and cost. Indeed, a comparison of the plan with other similarly-sized schools in the top 50 US News and World Report rankings shows that our current plan is well behind our competition in almost every way, such as co-pay percentage and out-of-pocket maximum.

Kissinger, Baker discuss future of Chinese-American relations

What was once a cool relationship between the People's Republic of China and the United States is now an open relationship, helped, in part, by Rice. To honor the 30th anniversary of full diplomatic relations between these two nations, Rice's James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy hosted a conference on April 3 entitled, "America and China: The Next 30 Years." The event consisted of a panel of distinguished guests, including former Secretaries of State Henry Kissinger and James A. Baker III, and China's Ambassador to the U.S., Zhou Wenzhong.

Teamwork integral to cancer awareness

Cancer is a devastating disease that has affected over 10.8 million Americans. The American Cancer Society estimate that approximately 565,650 Americans died of cancer in 2008. That means that across the nation, 565,650 families experienced the loss of a son, daughter, mother or father to cancer in the year 2008 alone.Now, imagine this devastation happening every year.

Lovett's The Visitors is welcome to stay

The famed American composer Aaron Copland once wrote of being "overwhelmed" by theater, sometimes to the point of resentment. Clearly, he was writing of the great tragedies, loves and disputes that have been born on stages across the centuries. Lovett College's currently running drama, The Visitors, would not overwhelm Copland, but it has a well-constructed story, a strong cast and unique staging, which all compensate for its few narrative and thespian weaknesses.The Visitors follows a wealthy Manhattan couple who relocate to the Caribbean because of the husband Barry's (Lovett senior Nathan Bledsoe) heart condition. Once there, they are visited by aging rock star Azure Ray (Lovett junior Viren Desai), who tries to start a charity with Barry as the spokesperson, among other shenanigans.

Track teams travel to Austin for Texas Relays (Men's)

The past two weeks held some mundane results for the men's track team, but there was one result that left everyone, if not speechless, then at least in awe. First, the typical. Over the last few weeks, the Owls stayed in the Lone Star State to compete in the Victor Lopez Bayou Classic, held at Rice Track Stadium, and the 82nd Annual Clyde Littlefield Texas Relays in Austin, Texas. During a fifth-place finish at the Bayou Classic, Head Coach Jon Warren (Jones '88) spotted some star performances, as senior Simon Bucknell took first place in the 1500-meter run and freshman Collin Shurbet finished third in 400-meter hurdles.

Losses drop women's tennis' winning record

The women's tennis team, it appears, cannot catch a break. Despite breaking their four-match losing streak against University of Texas-Pan American with a 7-0 sweep, the Owls began another losing streak against formidable opponents University of Tulsa and University of North Texas, running their record to 10-11. On March 27, Rice faced off against unranked UTPA, which had lost 7-0 against Lamar only a day earlier. Coming off a pair of 4-3 losses to the University of Louisville and the University of South Alabama, the Owls desperately needed a convincing victory against this less-talented squad to start fresh and put the past behind them.

Tuesday's Sports Update: Owls unable to clinch win over Aggies

Pitching and hitting woes plagued the Owls Tuesday night, and under the watchful eye of former president George H.W. Bush and his wife Barbara, the second-ranked Owls fell 7-3 to unranked Texas A&M.Sophomore Travis Wright got the ball for the 25-9 Owls and only lasted one inning, giving up one run on two hits. Rice immediately got that one back in the bottom of the frame, when a double by freshman third baseman Anthony Rendon scored Holt. Both players finished the night with a team-high three hits.

New kid on the block

Anthony Rendon has been an unyielding force in the Rice lineup this season. He has started all 30 games, often batting clean-up in the lineup. He has played a solid third base, filling the wide gap left by junior Diego Seastrunk, who moved to catcher after Adam Zornes (Baker '08) was drafted last June. He leads the Owls in seven statistical categories, and he ranks second in four more. The freshman arrived on the scene this season as a fresh, local product of Lamar High School, singled in his first career at-bat in Rice's opening win against California Polytechnic State University in San Luis Obispo, Calif., and has not looked back since.

New Lovett masters prepare for college life

The search is finally over: Lovett College will be welcoming Professor Matteo Pasquali and his wife Marie- Nathalie Contou-Carrere as its new masters next year. Pasquali and Contou-Carrere will replace current masters Bernard and Carolyn Aresu. Pasquali and Contou-Carrere said although they were initially hesitant about the job, they quickly warmed to the opportunity.

Letters to the Editor

Bikes-for-cars article erroneous

At bat with Rookie of the Year's Ryan Dunson

On April Fools' Day, The Rice Thresher had a phone conversation with Ryan Dunson of the North Carolina-based pop-rock band Rookie of the Year. Currently on their third album as a band, Sweet Attention, Rookie of the Year are playing at Java Jazz tonight. Their music can be heard at www.purevolume.com/rookieoftheyear.Rice Thresher: How did Rookie of the Year get started?

Inconsistent play brings men's tennis tough losses

If you heard a crashing sound last week, it was not Rice's new electric car taking a spill but the men's tennis team's season starting its tumultuous final stretch. After coming within a breath of downing then-No. 18 Pepperdine University at home on March 27, the then-35th-ranked Owls dropped a gut-wrencher against then-No. 41 University of Oklahoma last Sunday. But these losses - the Owls' seventh and eighth by a score of 4-3 - did not hurt nearly as much as a 5-2 face-plant against the then-No. 29 University of Tulsa. The Golden Hurricane, which had been reeling with three losses in its last four games against ranked foes, showed Rice that it was still the team to beat in Conference USA.

Prospies flood campus

On Wednesday, approximately 450 students admitted to the class of 2013 - 20 percent of the total - participated in Owl Day, the annual event that hosts admitted students overnight on campus, Head of Overnight Hosting Alex Wyatt said. April 8 was chosen for Owl Day because the event had to occur after April 1, when admissions decisions were sent out. Wyatt, a Lovett College sophomore said they did not want to have Owl Day later during finals week, because students would be too busy.

Mikhalkov's dirty dozen

It takes guts to remake one of the greatest movies of all time, but 12, a new Russian retelling of the classic 12 Angry Men, brings interpretive daring to a new level. The plot is the same as the original - a jury votes on a suspect who appears to be guilty, but a lone dissenter changes all their minds - yet the movie bursts out of the confines of the American original, throwing in battle scenes, drug addictions and contemporary political statements to make a film that is thoroughly entertaining.Some film critics are unhappy with the changes, which take a classic movie where the camera almost never left the jury's deliberation room and turns it into a big, long, loud epic. But these critics fail to understand that this is not a remake; rather, it is a start from scratch, from a distinctly Russian point of view dealing with distinctly Russian problems. Although 12 does lapse into cliché and heavy-handed symbolism at times, it is as powerful as the American classic on which it is based.

Erratum

In the March 27 article "Bikes-for-cars for grad students," the Thresher incorrectly stated that the retail prices of the Giant Boulder-brand bicycles sold to the Rice Village Apartments retail for $735. They actually retail for $330. The Thresher regrets the error.