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NEWS 3/19/09 7:00pm

Final grades signify improvement for men's basketball

Last Thursday's 73-51 second-round defeat against the University of Tulsa in the Conference USA tournament capped the men's basketball team's first season under Head Coach Ben Braun. Though full of ups and downs, buzzer beaters and blowouts, it was a season that saw marked improvement on last year's disappointing finish and raises the expectations for Rice men's basketball in years to come. Though Rice has shown improvement in many areas, a 21-0 run by Tulsa three minutes into the first half showed just how far this team has to go. Playing their second game in as many days, the Owls were unable to keep pace with the Golden Hurricane, who came into the game with the second best record in C-USA. The Owls struggled offensively, as freshman guard Connor Frizzelle was the only Owl in double figures with 10 points. Senior guard Rodney Foster, Rice's third leading scorer with 10 points per game, was held to just eight points on 1-5 shooting.


NEWS 3/19/09 7:00pm

Rockin' the Broch

Interviewing one of your favorite artists can be nerve-wracking, to say the least. Interviewing Ben Kweller seemed especially intimidating to me for a few reasons.Kweller, whose awesome record Sha Sha was released my freshman year of high school, was the guy a lot of the "cool kids" listened to. He seemed to be their soundtrack for what I imagined to be the crazy weekends filled with parties and drinking, occuring while I stayed at home, listening to Mary Chapin Carpenter, riding horses and reading. In my mind, I had set his personality as one of those popular kids: polite, but well aware of the fact that they're cooler than you'll ever be.


NEWS 3/19/09 7:00pm

New Brown RAs chosen

After months of deliberation, Brown College selected Jenny and Joe Rozelle (Hanszen '00 and Wiess '99) as its Resident Associates for the 2009-'10 academic year, Brown College senior and Head of the RA Search Committee Larissa Charnsangavej said. "This is something we have talked about for a long time," Jenny Rozelle said. "We had long decided that if we moved back to Houston, we would want to be RAs."



NEWS 3/19/09 7:00pm

St. Patty's Day brings Rice gutsy win over Longhorns

The way the baseball team has been playing, Omaha is looking a lot closer. The Owls (12-5) finished their seven-game homestand Tuesday night with a 6-3 victory over the University of Texas, ranked tops in the nation, according to Baseball America. On this homestand Rice, currently ranked seventh, also competed in the Academy Sports & Outdoors Rice Classic, followed by a series against the unranked University of San Diego last weekend.


NEWS 3/19/09 7:00pm

Women falter against Louisville

Last Saturday, the 73rd-ranked women's tennis team fell 9-7 to the unranked University of Louisville on the road at the Bass-Rudd Tennis Center in Louisville, Ky. Tough times have befallen Rice, as the team will most likely lose its ranking and fall far short of its goal of reaching top 40 in the national rankings as a result of its current three-match losing streak. The Owls dropped their three doubles matches, including an 8-1 loss by junior Julie Chao and freshman Ana Guzman, a close 9-8 (7-4) loss by sophomore Jessica Jackson and junior Rebecca Lin and an 8-6 loss by sophomore Rebekka H?nle and freshman Alex Rasch. On a season that has seemed to always hinge on who wins the doubles point, this match was no different. Doubles has long been the team's focal point in practice, but the practice has been to little avail. The lack of aggressiveness, desire to be on the court and overall energy concern Head Coach Elizabeth Schmidt.



NEWS 3/19/09 7:00pm

Stereotyping places unreasonable expectations on Asians

There was a moment during the recent Student Association elections when I experienced a feeling I don't think I ever expected to encounter at Rice - I felt ashamed.While reading the ballots for the Rice Student Volunteer Program candidates, I came across a write-in ballot that read, "some Asian girl." It is difficult to express in words how that comment made me feel, but I can come close by calling it an overall sensation of embarrassment, sadness and anger. In that moment, I was ashamed to be an RSVP member, to be a Rice student and most of all, I was ashamed of being Asian myself.


NEWS 3/19/09 7:00pm

Beer Bike restrictions imposed

As students greet the morning sun to prepare for Beer Bike festivities tomorrow, they will also greet a new Beer Bike policy that has prompted many questions from members of the community. For the first time, colleges will be limited to a single 24-foot flatbed truck to carry balloons into what is unofficially known as the largest water balloon fight in the world.The issue was first brought up in November at a meeting of all Beer Bike coordinators across the university. After the decision to limit the number of trucks was made, its reception was mixed.


NEWS 3/19/09 7:00pm

Rain keeps men indoors

With rain falling from the early morning on, then-No. 31 Rice's contest against then- No. 51 Duke University and then-No. 75 University of Southern Mississippi never stood a chance at being played at Jake Hess Tennis Stadium. As puddles precluded the Owls' first home matches since the beginning of the semester, the teams headed elsewhere to play for what was, for all intents and purposes, Rice's ninth- and 10th- straight road matches of the year. Since the Owls had a .500 record in the eight road matches leading up to last weekend, it should come as little surprise that the team left the weekend with a Friday loss to the Blue Devils and a Sunday victory against the Golden Eagles.


NEWS 3/19/09 7:00pm

Baker Shake's Tempest is stormin' good

Last year, Baker College's annual Shakespeare production presented one of the Bard's bleakest plays, Richard III, a violent story of scheming and self-destruction. For Baker Shake's 2009 presentation, the troupe demonstrates its versatility by turning to The Tempest, a light-hearted adventure that features spontaneous dancing, mischievous fairies and a whimsical love story. Fortunately, this show is just as great a success as last year's. The Tempest is, from beginning to end, a total delight.As always, William Shakespeare has constructed a complex plot to keep the audience on its toes. In The Tempest, the rightful Duke of Milan, Prospero (J. Cameron Cooper, Brown '02), has been usurped by his cunning brother, Antonio (Martel College senior Robert Anderson), and exiled to an enchanted island in the middle of the Atlantic. There he lords over a realm of magical spirits and raises his daughter Miranda (Wiess College freshman Margay Dean), preparing to exact revenge on Antonio.


NEWS 3/19/09 7:00pm

New restrictions hinder spirit of Beer Bike

There are no Rice traditions that compare to Beer Bike. Not Rice baseball, not O-Week and most definitely not pumpkin grades. Thus, you will understand why we are more than a tad perturbed that the planners of this year's Beer Bike have changed the format of this year's parade, limiting all colleges to only one truck (see story, page 5). We take exception to this decree, made without student vote and with little student consent outside of each college's coordinators, for a multitude of reasons. First, and perhaps foremost, is the reasoning that the restriction of trucks will somehow prepare students and coordinators for the pending arrival of two new colleges. This reasoning is flawed - how will imposing restrictions on this year's students prepare them, or the coordinators, for the addition of Duncan and McMurtry? How will fewer trucks ready us for next year's increase? The only reason that this may help us is that coordinators will have to deal only with finding one truck, which may have been a planned imposition for next year, as Duncan and McMurtry, the two largest colleges, would, most likely, have filled the most trucks with those plastic pellets of pain. (Or, for the pessimistic, Duncan and McMurtry could possibly lack the college cohesiveness that necessitates the filling of balloons, putting them at an obvious disadvantage, but we digress).



NEWS 3/12/09 7:00pm

Midwest trip challenges women

The women's tennis team did not kick off its spring break the way it hoped, falling victim to two heartbreaking losses to beatable teams in Western Michigan University and Ohio State University. Instead of giving their ranking a much needed boost, the Owls dropped to 9-6 on the year. The losses may have had something to do with the locales because instead of soaking up the spring break sun on the beaches, the women suffered through freezing temperatures in Kalamazoo, Mich. The unranked Owls froze against the 61st-ranked Broncos, falling 4-3 in a close match that highlighted their weaknesses in doubles and inexperience with close matches as their youngest players, sophomore Jessica Jackson and freshman Alex Rasch, each fell.


NEWS 3/12/09 7:00pm

KTRU Pick of the Week: Bishonen Idolpop Genocaust

When a small waif of an album, or rather half-CD, marked with only "Bishonen Idolpop Genocaust," found its way into the KTRU station, most people did not know what to make of it. The album had the design of a robot and the sound of something that, to the normal ear, would be pure madness. For some time the fate of the album was thrown in the air as the music was so foreign that it seemed everyone was simply afraid of it.Bishonen Idolpop Genocaust hails from Huntsville, Texas, and plays a style of synth electronic music that is reminiscent of old eight-bit video games, so long as they had a high-pitched screaming vocalist accompaniment in Japanese. The native Texan group identifies itself as "Electro/IDM/J-Pop," and the members certainly utilize their identified range to the fullest extent.


NEWS 3/12/09 7:00pm

Kelley leads golf team to sixth place

At 22 games under .500 with only four scheduled tournament left, the golf team's chances of becoming eligible for the NCAA Championship might seem a statistical impossibility. But teams only need to finish with a .500 record, and since they earn one win for every team they finish ahead of in a tournament and one loss for every team they finish behind, the Owls still have a shot.


NEWS 3/12/09 7:00pm

Craig leads swimmers to third place finish

The swim team may have finished the regular season with a few more losses than last year, but that did not stop the Owls from making their mark at the Conference USA Championships. Rice finished the meet, held from Feb. 25-28, in third place with a total score of 595. Rice fell to Southern Methodist University (857.5) and crosstown rival University of Houston (623) Although they had come in second place at the C-USA Championships the past two years, the women were not upset with their third-place finish.


NEWS 3/12/09 7:00pm

Men's basketball moves on in C-USA

It is never too late to save the best for last. The 10th-seeded men's basketball team played the part of Cinderella at the Conference USA tournament on Wednesday, upsetting fifth-seeded Marshall University 60-59 just one week after losing by 14 to the Thundering Herd (15-17, 7-9 C-USA) in Huntington, W.V. The victory means the Owls (10-21, 4-12 C-USA) will face Tulsa University on Thursday in the quarterfinals of the C-USA tournament, which is held in Memphis, Tenn. Tulsa (10-9, 12-4 C-USA), the second seed, had a first round bye after finishing second in the conference to the University of Memphis.


NEWS 3/12/09 7:00pm

Pink Panther 2 funny for all the wrong reasons

Movies can sometimes be so terrible that they end up being funny. Such is the case with the recently-released film The Pink Panther 2, in which Steve Martin's character, Inspector Jacques Clouseau, embodies all that is ridiculously preposterous and leaves the audience asking why they are laughing during this horrible, over-the-top comedy.As the second installment of the reboot of the classic 1960-70s Pink Panther series starring Peter Sellers, The Pink Panther 2 features Steve Martin (Baby Mama) in the role of the Clouseau, the bumbling British detective whose goal in life is to preserve, protect and defend the treasured Pink Panther diamond. Aided by his trusty sidekick Ponton (Ca$h's Jean Reno) and girlfriend Nicole (Lars and the Real Girl's Emily Mortimer), Clouseau is a part of the dream detective team (including Beverly Hills Chihuahua's Andy Garcia) that protects all of the world's most valuable treasures from the infamous villain, The Tornado.


NEWS 3/12/09 7:00pm

MRC's "COM(MAN)D" t-shirt slogan incites sexist views

The Hanszen College Men's Resource Center (MRC) has been selling "MAN" shirts both to raise campus awareness and to raise funds for its Hu(man)ity Campaign to help "young men in the Fifth Ward Enrichment program become responsible adults and productive members of the community." I thought it a perfect example of the kind of socially conscious civic engagement projects Rice students should engage in - that is, until I saw a shirt with the slogan "COM(MAN)D" with the word "man" displayed in a larger font and bracketed within the whole word.Understandably, the MRC was probably trying to make a statement by using funny or enticing slogans as part of its campaign. Most of the slogans are indeed so, such as "WO(MAN)," "(MAN)GO" and "BRO(MAN)CE," but this particular slogan, "COM(MAN)D," is particularly offensive and potentially misleading.