Rice University’s Student Newspaper — Since 1916

Saturday, April 20, 2024 — Houston, TX

Jason Siegel


NEWS 9/25/08 7:00pm

Common reading lacking common goal

Dear Common Reading, this is for you. I think you should ponder this candid review. You're hogwash, you're toothless, you're gonna be great. I believe in you truly, but first I berate. A text is a means, not an end to pursue. An author's deficient with one point of view. To your book-centric past please now say adieu for a transfiguration I here beg of you.Oh Common Reading, I must beat you blue but I'll do it with love; I'll do it for you. Your name, to be frank, is an earful of sigh. No import, no fanfare, no reason to fly. This gift with a spine is just one I don't want. It's pressure; it's hazing; a high school haunt. This shared ID is a humorous plea. I'm Hanszen! I'm MechE! I'm Three Cups of Tea! This dialogue's missing a who, where and how. Professor Plum in the library by the candlestick now? Your issues are passive, enslaved by a book. What's cheaper? What's easy? Where shouldn't we look? You're present at orientation each year. Those freshmen, those suckers! Upperclassmen drink beer. And most sorry yet, you're still thinking small. We're Rice and we're hedged, but we can be tall. You salute our new presence by having us read or sit in a theater to hear of a need. But what of our talents, our minds and our hearts? We're not just some sponges; we've got moving parts!


NEWS 9/11/08 7:00pm

Time to fight Facebook, free ourselves

To egregiously misquote AbortionFacts.com, if it "feels so good, why do I feel so bad?" Such is life in the Facebook universe. By way of bells, whistles, graffiti, tags and pokes, the mammoth social network has become our choice method of social intercourse. According to its About page, Facebook yields "the power to.[make] the world more open and connected," and it does. But Trojan knows that some things are better left unshared.Mark Zuckerberg, self-acknowledged computer geek and - according to the June 26, 2008, Rolling Stone article "The Battle for Facebook"- mathlete, science Olympian, Latin honors society participant and band member, possesses the endearing nerdish quality we've all come to know, love and live at Rice. But the blue-hued child he spawned in early 2004 has torn away at our social motivations, our dialog skills, our yearnings for close relationships and - dare I say - our happiness. Ironic it is that a Harvard colleague of Zuckerberg's claimed they had "a lack of time . to do social networking." Now we instant-friend that kid from GenChem to whom we've never said three consecutive words; that's "networking." And we eschew asking out that nice girl down the hall because she's not "Looking for: Dating." In his crusade to obliterate social barriers, Zuckerberg realized quite the opposite. Today's Facebook universe is but a tour of expediency, of shallow interaction.


NEWS 8/21/08 7:00pm

Personal growth rivals academic honors

This, matriculants, is your new beginning. Doubtless before today you have been told of the formidable ride ahead. Independence, midnight food runs, walks of shame, all-nighters, lectures, dorm rooms, freedom, flip-flops, keg stands, new friends, books, class. As if swallowed into the depths of another dimension for four years - give or take - to slosh in the presence of anarchy before being spat out into some vanilla society, this is your college experience. The Real World awaits with its system, its responsibilities, for the day you stumble defenselessly from behind the protection of the Sallyport. And when you do, let there be no mistake: Playtime is over; you are an adult.Don't buy it.