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NEWS 5/15/08 7:00pm

RDT spring show offers memorable experience

By Taylor Johnson

Rice Dance Theatre's spring show, "Dancing on the Edge," did not keep me sitting on the edge of my seat during the performance. Having gone to see the show on a man-date with my roommate, I recall looking over at him after the first dance after intermission and saying, "There are three dances left? Mistake."Despite the initial negative reaction I garnered from the show, however, it seems much more powerful as I look back on it a month later. The dancers moved across the stage gracefully and beautifully in most cases, and the synchronization between them was not without flaw, but it was admirable. The lighting of the stage was filled with a variety of usually deep and dark, cool colors. One dance utilized a strobe light and included a warning in the program for epileptics. The strobe light turned out to be so weak, though, that I doubt the most sensitive of epileptics could have gone into seizure, and this potentially dynamic visual just fizzled instead of adding sizzle.

NEWS 5/15/08 7:00pm

Speaker addresses clean election reform

By Sarah Rutledge

For this election year, political fervor may have gripped many students on campus who look into donating money to fund their favored candidate's election. But Dr. Joan Mandle, president of Democracy Matters, an organization devoted to campaign financing that has 70 chapters in college campuses across the United States, claims these donations may not make a difference for many politicians, who mainly answer to corporate interests and the privileged elite. Mandle, a professor at Colgate University, spoke April 21 in the Miner Lounge of the Rice Memorial Center.Mandle began her talk, entitled "White House for Sale? Do Students Really Have a Voice?" by acknowledging former Student Association President Laura Kelley with arranging for her to come to Rice. Kelley, a Brown College senior, began her internship with Democracy Matters earlier this semester. Mandle said students in the internship focus on reaching out to other students and enacting political change on their college campuses.

NEWS 5/15/08 7:00pm

Commentary: Where have all the Rangers fans gone

By Casey Michel

When I first got to Texas, images of 10-gallon hats, five-pound belt buckles and 24/7 barbecuing were floating through my head. The theme song to that mental slideshow was "Where Have All the Cowboys Gone," sung by '90s-crooner Paula Cole, if only because I was in a soft-rock mood, and it had "cowboys" in the title.Of course, much has changed since then - I now know barbecues come and go as the rain pleases, and those belt buckles only really exist in the realm of Wild West dance clubs. Cole's song still comes on every once in a while, between Paul Simon and Pearl Jam, but after a couple semesters of meet-and-greet, the lyrics in my mind now say, "Where have all the Texas Rangers fans gone?"

NEWS 5/15/08 7:00pm

One-stop CWS coverage

 

The Rice Owls are headed to Omaha for the College World Series, and the Thresher's got it covered.

NEWS 5/15/08 7:00pm

Staff Editorial:Parking proposal rejection na've

 

Earlier this month, President David Leebron reviewed the Parking Committee's decision for next year's parking fees. The committee, which had proposed a return to the tiered-surcharge system and cutting Greenbriar Lot's surcharge by half for students, found its work from the past year largely overlooked when Leebron rejected much of its proposal (see story, page 1). We applaud the committee's willingness to listen to student opinion; earlier this spring, committee members presented their ideas to members of the Student Association, generating positive feedback on the possibility of cutting rates to make Greenbriar Lot more affordable.

NEWS 5/15/08 7:00pm

Fresno St. bests Rice at College World Series - June 16

By Dylan Farmer

Before the baseball team's opening game at the College World Series in Omaha, Neb., most analysts agreed that the Owls would have to find some way to jumpstart their offense if they were to make a serious run for the title. Nobody expected that the pitching would need to be resuscitated, too. The underdog Fresno St. was chillingly efficient in its complete dismantling of sixth-ranked Rice's pitching efforts; the Bulldogs turned 13 hits and six walks into 17 runs as they continued their rampage over nationally ranked opponents with a victory Sunday afternoon. Fresno St. has now defeated five top-25 teams in its notable postseason run.

NEWS 5/15/08 7:00pm

BioE professor wins award for photobiology research

By Stephanie Jennings

The American Society of Photobiology awarded Associate Bioengineering Professor Rebekah Drezek the New Investigator Award in March. Drezek, also an electrical engineering associate professor, was awarded $1,000 and will speak about her research in June at the society's annual meeting in San Francisco. Drezek is the first bioengineer to receive this award.According to its Web site, the American Society of Photobiology gives the New Investigator Award to a young researcher under the age of 36 who has conducted a notable amount of research in photobiology and photomedicine, a discipline of biology that studies applications of light and optics in biology and medicine. The award is also open to researchers who are new to the field. Honorees are nominated anonymously and selected by a committee.

NEWS 5/15/08 7:00pm

LSU eliminates Rice from CWS with 6-5 comeback win

By Dylan Farmer

When he left the game with two outs in the fifth inning, starting pitcher Chris Kelley took a sigh of relief. He had done his job, holding Louisiana State University scoreless through more than half of Tuesday's elimination game at the College World Series. It was one of the baseball team's best performances by a starter in the postseason, and as senior reliever Cole St.Clair recorded a convincing strikeout to end the inning, Rice fans were feeling comfortable with their team's 5-0 lead.Three innings later, however, after the Tigers marched off the field with an improbable 6-5 comeback victory, that feeling of comfort had turned into disbelief.

NEWS 5/15/08 7:00pm

News in brief

 

College Way closureStarting last Wednesday, College Way in front of Autry Court began a daily scheduled 7 a.m. to 5 p.m. closure. The street will reopen next Tuesday. Construction crews are building a man hole and tying in new storm lines, Facilities Service Center Supervisor Eugene Kettlewell said in an e-mail last Friday.

NEWS 5/15/08 7:00pm

Column: Rice blogs reveal university's potency and flaws

By Evan Mintz

I love blogs. News blogs, tech blogs and such, those are nice. But the best blogs are those personal blogs: Livejournal, Xanga, etc., because it is there where you can find real information. Blogs that provide analysis and whatnot just provide a new avenue to information that is already out there. But in these more personal exhibitions, people are willing to spill information they would never, ever reveal in personal conversation. Those blogs provide true insight into peoples' characters, giving little secrets straight from the horse's mouth - or keyboard. Whatever.The best thing about these personal blogs is that people will actively list their personal associations, such as home town, interests or university. With this information, five minutes of clicking can provide an interesting cross-section of campus - Christ-o-philes, coke fiends and other traditional members of the Rice fauna. In these HTML-framed journals, Rice students spill their deepest secrets and personal beliefs. While the entries may be entertaining at times, they also paint a rather distressing picture of the student body.

NEWS 5/15/08 7:00pm

Hercules and Love Affair anything but pretentious

By Kyle Barnhart

Eponymous albums with Internet buzz are hot right now: First Vampire Weekend, and now the new self-titled LP from Hercules and Love Affair. The latter has been touted as a "reinvention of disco," which is sort of like reinventing New Coke or trench warfare or anything else that sucked, then died. H&LA is signed under DFA Records - the label behind !!! and LCD Soundsystem - and DFA has been known to straddle the fine line between cool and pretentious music. Doesn't it already sound like an album you won't understand?Luckily for the listeners, Hercules and Love Affair is an album that transcends the pretentious attitude of anything with a dance beat. It's everything you love about subtle bass guitar and drums fused with semi-androgynous, powerful vocals and an element of atmosphere that can only be described as, well, mythical.

NEWS 5/15/08 7:00pm

Common Reading Selected

By Sarah Rutledge

Those who were hoping next year's common reading would be the timely political memoir by Allen Raymond, How to Rig an Election: Confessions of a Republican Operative, may have to wait until the 2012 presidential election. This month the common reading committee reached a decision, selecting Greg Mortenson's memoir, Three Cups of Tea: One Man's Mission to Promote Peace … One School at a Time, which they have since distributed to Orientation Week coordinators, advisers, resident associates, college counselors and next year's incoming class.The common reading committee met before winter recess and periodically throughout the spring, and is made up of undergraduate students, including former O-Week coordinators, a faculty member, a graduate student and Assistant to the President Matthew Taylor.

NEWS 5/15/08 7:00pm

Commentary: A disappointing finish, but more than just a two-and-out

By Casey Michel

Well, that was quick."Owlmaha" was here, but if you took a break to fret over Willie Randolph or throw out your salmonella-laced tomatoes, you returned to find Rice's College World Series presence replaced by a sickening vacuum. In our seventh CWS appearance since 1997, the Owls choked their way to the program's fourth two-and-out in seven tries, but only its first since Notre Dame bounced the Owls with a 5-3 two-run walk-off bomb in 2002.

NEWS 5/15/08 7:00pm

Owls defeat Aggies 9-7 in first game of Super Regional

By Yan Digilov

A record crowd of 5,368 spectators filled Reckling Park on Saturday to witness a Super Regional rematch between Rice and Texas A&M University. The Aggies could not prevent history from repeating itself as senior designated hitter Jordan Dodson again played the hero in the Owls' 9-7 win. Mimicking last year's performance, Dodson had the crowd seeing déj? vu as he broke a tie to pull the Owls ahead in game one. On the day, he had four RBIs spread across three hits, an impressive feat considering he entered the game batting .167. He raised his batting average by nearly 30 points by the end of the game.

NEWS 5/15/08 7:00pm

Column: Life after Rice vague, but clear in nature

By Taylor Johnson

As a man of generally few outspoken opinions, trying to choose what to write for my first and last column as an undergraduate at Rice was rather difficult. Looking within the hedges there were many options: From lambasting the administration for the lack of both outdoor power outlets for laptops, among other issues, at the new Brochstein Pavilion, to recommending improvements in writing and communication for the undergraduate engineering education at Rice, no topic seemed broad enough. Looking beyond the hedges to November's election or global warming seemed too detached. In truth, as cliché a topic as it is, the only thing that seemed worth discussing was moving on to the next phase of life and the choices we have outside the hedges as Rice graduates.Looking back four years ago to graduation from high school, it seemed like there were so many choices. In retrospect though, there were few choices beyond picking which school to continue studying at for an undergraduate education. Going to college was not a choice, but rather, a mandate. While not true for every high school graduate, this is certainly true for most students at Rice.

NEWS 5/15/08 7:00pm

Women's track set for postseason competition

By Natalie Clericuzio

This season, the women's track and field team set a bevy of personal and career individual bests. Together, however, they recorded an even more important team accomplishment: The largest number of post-season qualifiers in school history. After last weekend's action, the Owls now have 14 members with regional qualifying marks and one with a national meet invitation.The next competition for the Owls will be this weekend at the Conference USA Outdoor Championships in El Paso, Texas. Following that will be regional competition in Lincoln, Neb. May 30-31 and the NCAA National Championships in Des Moines, Iowa June 11-14. After winning the C-USA Indoor Championship in March, the Owls have a good chance to take both titles with a first-place finish in El Paso. With more regional qualifiers than any other school in C-USA this season, the Owls come in as the squad to beat.

NEWS 5/15/08 7:00pm

Missing student Matt Wilson found at University of California-Berkeley

By Dylan Farmer

Thursday, Aug. 14 - Hanszen College junior Matt Wilson, who had been missing since December, was found Wednesday night in a building on the University of California-Berkeley campus. A UC-Berkeley police officer was patrolling that part of the campus looking for a theft suspect when he came across Wilson alone in a classroom with a laptop hooked up to a projection system. At first, Wilson gave the officer a false name, but acknowledged that he was not a UC-Berkeley student. Later on, he provided police his real name.The laptop Wilson was using was confirmed to be stolen property, and police detained him overnight pending theft or trespassing charges.

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