The Rice Thresher (Houston, Tex.), Vol. 86, No. 26, Ed. 1 Tuesday, May 25, 1999 Page: 1 of 20
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the Rice Thresher
Vol. LXXXVI, Issue No. 26
SINCE 1916
Tuesday, May 25, 1999
Board OKs more construction
Wiess name remains, Mattel plans, Brown, Jones additions approved
by Jen Frazer
THRESHER EDITORIAL STAFF
The Board of Trustees — the
highest level of Rice administration
— met Wednesday and Thursday to
decide a number of construction and
campus policy issues.
Among their decisions: South
College will be Wiess College, Brown
and Jones Colleges will be added to
the construction list, and the 10th
college will not be seen in the aca-
demic lifetime of current students.
The board also approved the
Masters and Presidents Committee's
recommendations for Wiess' annual
Night of Decadence party and the
Alcohol Beverage Policy Advisory
Committee's recommendations
about the alcohol policy.
South is Wiess, Wiess is South
The board approved the request
by current Wiess students to make
the college's temporary move to
South College permanent and to se-
cure the naming of that building.
South College will now officially be
named Wiess; the name will move to
the new building with the students.
• The board also examined the
plans for the new Wiess, asking the
southernmost proposed wing be
eliminated and those beds absorbed
into the plans for the rest of the
building.
This measure -was to keep the
building on budget, Vice President
for Student Affairs Zenaido Cama-
cho said.
Martel plans
A board subcommittee selected
the current plans for Martel College
from a group of three between March
and last week's meeting. The full
board approved the selected plans,
which include suite configurations
and plans for the masters' house, as
well as illustrations of the projected
facades.
The current plan includes space
for the relocation of the playing field
near Jones, but the Jones parking lot
will be demolished to make room for
Martel.
Brown and Jones to expand
Plans to expand Brown and Jones
Colleges to meet the capacity of the
other colleges were included in a
recent formulation of the master
plan, but were projected far in the
future, after the construction of the
ninth and 10th colleges.
The board decided to move this
construction up and approved its
funding.
Jones will see an additional 42
beds, a new commons and a new
masters' house. Brown will get an
additional wing with 64 more beds
and a new commons.
The two colleges will then have
close to the average 235 beds and
their new commons will share a cen-
tralized kitchen with Martel.
Tenth college delayed
The demolition date for the old
Wiess College is still uncertain, Ca-
macho said. The land has been pro-
posed in the master plan as the fu-
ture site of a 10th college.
However, with the construction
of Martel and the move to expand
Jones and Brown, the board de-
cided to wait to build another col-
lege.
Camacho said the immediate
need fqr housing may be appeased
by the new construction, and the
long-term need can be assessed at a
later date. The land remains avail-
able for the purpose of college ex-
pansion, though.
NOD and the alcohol policy
The board approved the direc-
tion of the NOD recommendations
and the alcohol policy revisions.
These two policy recommenda-
tions were made in April to Cama-
cho. Camacho approved them, but
he said the board's support gives
him the green light for full imple-
mentation of the plans.
With the alcohol policy, that
implementation will include train
See BOARD, Page 4
BECCA BERGQUIST/THRES
No more training do you require
Dressed as Darth Maul from The Phantom Menace, Dave Miller returns
to his chair after receiving his master's degree at commencement May
15; Darin Dillon (left) and Mark McEuen precede him. See Page 6 for
graduation photos and Page 15 for Star Wars coverage.
Restricted (distribution gone
by Esther Sung
THRESHER STAFF
Restricted distribution will be
no more. The faculty voted May 5
— by an overwhelming majority
— in favor of, a proposal which
modified the implementation of
distribution credits and incorpo-
rated the language requirements
they approved Nov. 4.
This was the second of two
votes required to alter the cur-
riculum. The first vote on March
14 passed by a similar margin.
The new curriculum, which
will go into effect in the 2000-'01
academic year, still requires stu-
dents to take 12 semester hours
of desigjftKed distribution
courses in all three groups.
In place of the "restricted dis-
tribution" courses, students must
now take courses in at least two
different departments within a
given group.
The deans of each school will
determine which courses will
count for distribution.
Because the new curriculum
includes foreign language com-
petency, language courses
alone will not be able to satisfy
Group 1 distribution require-
ment.
The faculty defined compe-
tency in a foreign language as
equivalent to completing the 200-
level sequence of Rice foreign
language classes.
Students can fill this require-
ment by taking these classes,
studying or working abroad for
at least one semester, taking an
intensive summer program or
passing Rice-certified equiva-
lency exams.
The approved proposal allows
for the re-evaluation of the
program's effectiveness.
The faculty will review the
requirements and decide
whether to continue it for fall
2001.
At the same time, they will
also vote to determine if fresh-
man seminars should be re-
quired.
These seminars, if required,
would count toward distribution
to help overlap with language and
major requirements.
Schmidt delivers commencement address
Former German Chancellor Helmut
Schmidt delivered the keynote address
at Rice's 86th Commencement May
15. Hie following are excerpts from his
speech.
Indies and gentlemen, let me, in
the first place, thank President [Mal-
colm] Gillis for his invitation and his
rather flattering introduction. He has
told me that he hoped that I will
consider as a subject, "Europe in the
Oncoming Decade." Well, President
Gillis, I will follow your advice and
talk about Europe. But not just over
the next 10 years. Rather, talk about
Europe in the first half of the next
century. And I will put it into global
context. But before so doing, I want
to pay tribute to America. This is
about my 70th or 75th visit or so over
the last five decades. When I first
came to .your country, I was deeply
impressed by your nation's vitality,
and also by the foresighted foreign
political strategies of leader like
George Marshall, or John McLoy,
or Harry Truman, and by your readi-
ness to help the Europeans out of
the devastations of Hitler's war, even
including us defeated Germans.
Now today, half a century later, 1
am still impressed by your Ameri-
can vitality, although not as much
today by the wisdom of your global
policies. In the beginning of the twen-
tieth century, President Teddy
Roosevelt is reported to have told
you, "Speak softly and carry a big
stick."
Today at the end of our bloody
century, you are indeed carrying a
big stick. Militarily speaking, you
are indeed the most powerful super-
power. But at the same time you do
not speak softly. But indeed it seems
as if some of your political leaders
really believe it when they speak of
America's role as the -only global
leader. Or, in other words', in my
words, the global policeman. You
are just now experiencing in Kosovo
that not all the problems of the world
can be solved by military power. ...
In my view, the early decades of
the next century will see at least
three superpowers. Number one, the
United States, for obvious reasons.
Number two, China. Number three,
Russia. And by comparison, Japan
will probably remain to be a financial
world power only. But then it is think-
able for me that later on in India, in
the middle of the next century, 15
hundred million people will as well
acquire superpower status. ...
At the beginning of our century,
we had 16 hundred million human
beings altogether on our globe. To-
day, mankind numbers more than 6
billion human beings, and in 50 years
time we will reach at least 9 billion
human beings. Nine thousand mil-
lion humans. And the consequences
of that are going to be enormous.
There will be a growing number of
regional wars. There will be grow-
ing devastations of the oceans and ol
the global atmosphere. We will ex-
perience the urgent need to avoid a
global greenhouse, and therefore the
urgent need to curb down on the
number of human activities which
presently go on unlimited.
But exactly such foreseeable ne-
cessities are leading to the ever in-
creasing motivation on the side of
the Europeans to foster an even
closer European union. Because we
feel that otherwise we might fall vic-
tim to the dictates by the superpow-
ers. Whether in the fields of global
financial markets, which are in tur-
moil from time to time, or of trade
conflicts, or in the fields of conflicts
over the preservation of the global
natural habitat, or in the fields of
political conflict altogether. ...
See SPEECH, Page 6
INSIDE
COURTESY CHRISTOF SPIELER
A smaller crane spawns another May 2 at the construction site for the new Humanities Building In a display of crane
reproduction. The crane is one of several visible changes to campus — see Page 5 for a timeline of campus building.
OPINION Page 3
Goodbye Christof Angelique
NEWS Page 10
Light rail — the bus of the future
A&E
Sammy awards
Page 12
SPORTS Page 17
Baseball brings home the glory
Scoreboard
Baseball
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McAlister, Jett & Tam, Mariel. The Rice Thresher (Houston, Tex.), Vol. 86, No. 26, Ed. 1 Tuesday, May 25, 1999, newspaper, May 25, 1999; Houston, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth246651/m1/1/: accessed April 23, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Rice University Woodson Research Center.