Special Projects

Lakeview Terrace mixes absurdity with substance

"I'm the police; you have to do what I say!" Folks, let's take a moment to reflect on this very profound statement. Your next-door neighbor, screaming this at you, might leave you slightly befuddled. But imagine your neighbor as Samuel L. Jackson (Snakes on a Plane). Doing so instantly injects this somewhat innocuous threat with pure badass. Seriously, I would do anything to have Jackson's iconic voice as my voicemail recording, telling the mothafuckin' caller to leave a GODDAMN message.The line above is featured in the trailer for this weekend's box office headliner Lakeview Terrace, starring Patrick Wilson (The Phantom of the Opera), Kerry Washington (The Last King of Scotland) and Jackson as the antagonist. Wilson and Washington are newlyweds, moving into their California dream house. Jackson, a strict widowed father of two, does not approve of their interracial marriage.

National Society of Collegiate Scholars holds fall induction

This Monday, 164 Rice sophomores and juniors will join the Rice chapter of the National Society of Collegiate Scholars honor society. Every spring, the NSCS invites freshmen and sophomores in the top 20 percent of their class who have at least a 3.4 grade point average to join. The society has 233 chapters nationwide and includes 250 current Rice students. The NSCS induction ceremony will be held in the Farnsworth Pavilion of the Rice Memorial Center 6 p.m. Monday.

Ad campaign cheapens Rice's reputation

Who knew we have an official motto: "Rice University: Unconventional Wisdom."? The only other school I can think of with an official motto is University of Phoenix Online, and their slogan, "Thinking ahead," is not dissimilar to ours. I don't want a motto. I know of no other elite school with a motto. If Rice is unconventional, this should be evident to anyone familiar with the school. Otherwise, the slogan only serves to cheapen our reputation by suggesting a slogan is required to enhance it.Who Knew is one increasingly ubiquitous example of mottos on our campus. Rice's promotional campaign of banners and slogans which trumpets our fitness as an unconventional research university has even made its way onto our police cruisers. Who Knew is campy, but if Rice wants to announce its credentials with on-campus and online banners and slogans, phrasing them as questions is preferable to just stating them. "The prestigious Shepherd School of Music is at Rice" would be an embarrassment. So instead we have "Who knew the prestigious Shepherd School of Music was at Rice?" I worry, however, that this campaign and related efforts by Rice to create and expand its reputation has the effect of presenting Rice as insecure in its confidence.

SAC changes risk misleading prospective students

Recently, the student-led tour program facilitated by the Student Admissions Council has undergone several changes (See story, page 1). "Professional" polo shirts, optional visors, applications, training manuals and paychecks are in; flip-flops and a number of veteran tour guides are out. The admissions office itself has been renovated, and plans are even in the works for a model dorm room to become part of the standard tour package.What strikes us as the principal effect of all of this change is standardization, stagnation and, with that, sterility. With the push to make Rice's tour program more centralized and overseen (faculty replaced students as the principal selectors of new tour guides this year), we fear the consequential result could be a bland shell of its former self.

Comic: Cingle Cellularity

This Week in Photos

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Football player's parents file wrongful death suit

The parents of Dale Lloyd II, the Rice defensive back who died Sept. 24, 2006 following a regularly scheduled football practice, filed a wrongful death lawsuit against the university Tuesday. They contend that a combination of performance-enhancing supplements containing creatine and rigorous practices caused a fatal reaction due to his underlying sickle-cell anemia. Former Rice football coach Todd Graham, four other Rice assistant coaches and team doctors, and the NCAA were also named in the lawsuit, as well as two manufacturers of performance-enhancing dietary supplements: Optimal Nutrition Systems and Cytosport, according to Houston-based Lanier Law Firm in a press release Tuesday, on behalf of Lloyd's parents.

Early lead not enough for Rice to take Texas

Last weekend, the football team traveled to Austin for their 91st meeting with the University of Texas. The crowd of almost 100,000, the largest to see a Rice game since the Owls played the University of Michigan in 2000, saw the Owls fall to the seventh-ranked Longhorns 52-10. Although Rice was only down 7-3 at the conclusion of the first quarter, Texas quickly began an offensive push and scored 31 unanswered points from the first to the third quarters.

Wiess One-Acts start theater season right

Just in time for Families Weekend, Rice's college theater season opens this Thursday, Friday and Saturday at 8 p.m. with Wiess College Tabletop Theater's annual Freshman One-Acts, produced by Wiess College senior Roque Sanchez and presented entirely by Wiessmen.

Soccer defeats McNeese St. 4-2, but Owls fall to Texas A&M in final moments of game

Entering their final weekend before conference play, the soccer team knew they were waging a war against history, but they could not have been prepared for how difficult gaining even a partial victory would turn out to be. Though they were able to fend off McNeese State University, whom they played to an underachieving 2-2 tie last season, and challenge eighth-ranked Texas A&M University, who beat them 6-0 last year, the Owls were unable to complete the sweep.

In the wake of Ike

Hurricane Ike barreled through Houston early Saturday morning, leaving most of the city without electricity or water pressure. But Rice escaped the storm mostly unscathed with its basic functions intact, an occurrence many are attributing to preparation and coordination. Vice President for Administration Kevin Kirby credited the relative lack of damage caused by Ike to good planning on the part of the university.

Keystone keynotes mark the High Life

In the span of one weekend sometime in the early 2000s, I watched both A Walk to Remember with a then-girlfriend and the DVD of the Green Bay Packers' 1997 Super Bowl victory. Contented with these emotional highs and lows, I thought I was pretty square with the whole "sentimental depth" thing. How terrifyingly foolish! It is only because I lived in a frat house that I have learned the painful error of my ways and discovered the true poignancies of life. It turns out that we humans had it wrong the entire time: Life's emotional benchmarks don't come from love, hate, trauma or success. They come from a can, and the only way to get them out is through the greatest of all mankind's devices: by shotgunning a cheap beer.The first frat brother with whom I lived taught me about beer and, as a result, turned me into one of those people. You know which people I mean - there's one at every party. A dude, probably wearing a shirt with some sort of collar, leaning against a wall and holding a bottle label-side-out staring down everyone else in the room. A beer elitist. A beerlitist. One of those guys who shows up to a party, puts his own personal six-pack of Three Floyds or Dogfish Head in the common room fridge, and then gets pissy when some dumb freshman, breath bathed in the odor of Natty Light, grabs it for a game of Flip Cup. Good beer was for drinking, I thought, and bad beer was as useful as a second Rice CoffeeHouse.

Commentary: Armstrong visits shrink

[And now, for your reading pleasure, a scene from Lance Armstrong's recent therapy session in which the chatty, highly-critical shrink dissects Lance's recent decision to rejoin the Tour de France.]Tell me, Lance - who do you think you are? Michael Jordan?

Letters to the Editor

Amethyst Initiative stance at Rice fickle

Sports Notebook

Ike forces change of sporting plansWomen's Cross Country

Rice Cross Country 2008 Preview

Hurricane Ike wreaked havoc across the Houston and Galveston areas this past weekend, and the howling wind and pelting rain even managed to disrupt one of the most time-honored traditions of men's cross country: the "yahoo" race. This opening event to the Rice Invitational has always been a fan favorite, because it gives onlookers the chance to run in the two mile competition, in which runners shout "Yahoo!" after the starting gun. Unfortunately this and the other events of the Owls' only home meet will not occur this year, and the runners will focus their attention instead on the Texas A&M Invitational on Sept. 19 in College Station, Tex. As competition intensifies for the Owls in the 2008 campaign, they hope to learn from the lessons of last year's heartbreaking finish at the NCAA South Central Regional. The team finished in eighth place, a mere 13 points out of the top five. Head coach Jon Warren said the story would have ended on a better note had junior Aaron Robson, one of the team's top runners, not sustained an injury days before the meet.

Bush's security policies deserve praise

Observers to this election season have seen that an ever-increasing mass of campaign minions, career politicians and political pundits have been cultivating an exceedingly polarized atmosphere. For months now, each side has been readying their weapons and mapping out their strategies, attempting to secure votes via the skillful manipulation of rhetoric, divisive politics and hard-hitting inquiries. As different as the candidates are, one similarity is their common tendency to marginalize the successes of our current commander-in-chief. To be sure, the pair varies in terms of the degree to which they disregard the president's achievements. While Senator Barack Obama and Senator Joe Biden disparage President Bush's leadership (indeed Biden has hinted that, if elected, an Obama administration might possibly pursue criminal charges) Senator John McCain is doing his best to distance himself from the current administration.

RPC increases budget

Rice Program Council will see major internal changes this year, starting with a budget increase from $35,000 to $130,000. This budget will cover RPC's expanded roles, including the Passport to Houston program, formerly operated out of the Center for Civic Engagement, planning Homecoming and Willy Week concerts and organizing President David Leebron's and Dean of Undergraduates Robin Forman's study breaks. The increase in funding is part of efforts to include student involvement in planning large-scale Rice events and programs, Director of the Student Center Boyd Beckwith said. The three-year-old Passport to Houston program operated out of the President's Office for its first two years and came under the wing of the Center for Civic Engagement last year. In response to the CCE's desire to form a student advisory board for the program, the university instead reassigned the program to the RPC Arts & Entertainment Committee. As a result, the committee's budget increased from $6,000 to $48,000 this year.

HedgeHopper Week 3: Winds are calm, but yogurt is Swirll

Swirll Frozen Yogurt, located at the corner of University Blvd. and Kirby Dr., right next door to Half Price Books, is a dainty little hole-in-the-wall frozen yogurt shop that captures the eyes of Village pedestrians. Despite its unimposing exterior, its interior boasts wireless Internet and two huge plasma-screen TVs. One screen displays all of Swirll's flavors, offered on rotation only a few at a time with favorites like green tea and original available permanently, while the other is locked on premier products like smoothies, available in flavors such as blueberry, blackberry, café latte and cappuccino.Go with your friends or go alone; Swirll will accommodate any group size with room to stretch out. In fact, while the ambiance is good, it feels a bit cavernous. If the weather is beautiful, the patio provides another place to kick up feet. Customers can pick something up to go or bring their own board games to kill time. People who have work to do should not hesitate to bring it with them.

GoCrossCampus back for more virtual battles

This Monday, the residential colleges will form armies and the campus itself will become a battlefield as GoCrossCampus, a virtual war game analogous to the board game Risk, launches into its second year at Rice. In GXC, student players log on to a Web site and acquire virtual armies, which they build and direct strategically in a campus-wide war lasting several months. Founded by Yale University students and piloted at Rice last year, the game serves as a new channel for college system rivalries. The game's Web site includes a detailed map of the Rice campus, upon which students place armies in accordance with instructions from college commanders. Each day, players read a posted battle plan from their commanders and are granted one turn for deploying armies. Colleges compete for campus territories and alternatively form alliances and mobilize against each other, stoking inter-college competition.