The Rice Thresher (Houston, Tex.), Vol. 53, No. 4, Ed. 1 Thursday, October 7, 1965 Page: 2 of 12
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Monster flick proves three heads better than one
By CHARLES DEMITZ
The latest sample of Orien-
tal Camp to reach Houston is
"Ghidrah the Three - Headed
Monster," a first-run and since-
departed feature at the Majes-
tic. This cinematic monster
mash brings every miscreature
west of the Aleutians home to
roost.
In Tokyo a girl in Emmet-
Kelly attire appears, claiming
Martian citizenship and predic-
ting doom. A plainscfothesman-
errant takes interest and inves-
tigates.
His sister, employed by the
news Media, strikes an acquain-
tance with a scientist who is
studying a peculiar meteorite in
the nearby boondocks.
Aha! we cry, a real potboiler
in the works. Everybody knows
everybody else, just like the old
Ellery Queen mysteries.
Danger Flags
The danger flags go up
when the detective's family
plops down for a session with
the idiot tube. A mutt-and-jeff
duo of emcees rocks into an As-
iatic "You Asked For It," sans
Art Baker and Skippy Peanut
Butter.
The studio audience asks to
see two singing sprites, six in-
The Rice Thresher
glENCf
John Durham, Editor
John Hamilton, Associate Editor
Terry O'Rourke, News: Editor
Phil Garon, Managing Editor
Moi-ag Fullilove, Copy Editor
*74e K/aaduHZnct
The Woodward Plan will probably be
accepted or rejected by the University
some time this fall. Rice would greatly
benefit from adopting- the proposal.
Originally made public last fall, the
carefully designed program calls for the
creation of a University College to be
filled by a pilot program of 50 entering
freshmen next fall.
It is, in simplest terms, an attempt to
put genuine education into the Rice experi-
ence—especially during the Freshman
year.
It is hard to explain why Rice selects
its students from among the top high
school graduates, pays its faculty salaries
which rank in the top twenty universities
in the nation, and yet places these students
and faculty together in a system that is
not very different from the one used in
mediocre schools around the country.
The only thing that the usual freshman
curriculum has going for it is several hun-
dred years of tradition.
Is there any other institution in Ameri-
ca that has changed its methods so little
over such a long period of time as higher
education ?
The Rice freshman, having gained ad-
mission and deposited his $1200, deserves
something better than what he now gets.
And the University should not rest until
it provides something better.
The Woodward Plan is the best attempt
we have seen to remedy some of the prob-
lems of Rice's freshman year and subse-
quent undergraduate education. University
College would be a welcome addition to
Rice next fall.
*paad ? Service ?
And the food service.
The Rice food service got a new central
kitchen. The kitchens in all of the colleges
were expanded to give better service.
Automatic "cows" were installed to get rid
of the old, messy, wasteful cardboard car-
tons of milk.
And what happened?
The lunch lines slowed down to a snail's
pace because the machines take longer
than cartons to give the same amount of
milk. Not to mention the fact that the
machines go dry faithfully at every meal.
And although the food is warmer, there
is less of it. Tuesday night in°Wiess there
were no seconds of meat. When there is a
choice of main dishes at noon, one is con-
sistently gone at least 15 minutes before
the line closes.
Perhaps it is irrelevant to point out that
Foote's Cafeteria in the village serves any
customer one portion of meat and all the
vegetables he cares to eat without knowing
in advance how many customers will come
in for a given meal. And for $1.
It costs $1.25 to eat in the colleges in
the evening.
But it's a long way to walk to the Vil-
lage.
Ok Smalt Settle
We hear the term "multiversity" ap-
plied to such places as Berkeley, Texas,
and Michigan. Why? Because they assign
their students IBM numbers; the classes
meet in extremely large sections; the em-
phasis is on the graduate student and the
publishing faculty member.
Also there are large government grants
supporting important research in the
school, a large number of separate divi-
sions and professional schools, and a seem-
ingly unending increase in the number of
students.
* * s|«
Rice students are now assigned IBM
numbers; Freshman courses have over 300
students attending one lecture; President
Pitzer has said that the University will
begin to emphasize the graduate programs
more; and publishing is still an easier
ticket to tenure than teaching.
NASA is building our space science
building; NSF is building a math building
and a biology addition; the architecture
department has just become a separate
school; and the student body enrollment
will double in the next ten years.
sH :|s
A multiversity in miniature?
/4 ^ecvatcC
The college presidents are probably the
most important people in their collges for
making the college system work smoothly.
And they spend more time at their jobs
than any other elected student leaders.
They also perform a good many admin-
istrative tasks which University employ-
ees would be left with otherwise.
For these two reasons, along with the
University's commitment to the college
system, we feel that the presidents should
receive some kind of tangible reward for
their services.
And while we can think of no one who
would run for the chief position of a col-
lege with financial reward as his goal, the
presidents are at least as vital to the col-
lege system as the graduate students who
live in the colleges without paying room
and board. And the presidents have to live
on campus.
A room and board rebate to the presi-
dents would be an excellent method for
the University to demonstrate its commit-
ment to the colleges, at little actual finan-
cial loss to the University.
ches tall, from some isle of the
blest. They appear, singing in
echo chamber tones of the
Great Catapillar God MORTH-
RAH, who guards the island's
happiness quotient, keeps the
celestial spheres greased, and
maintains the general welfare.
Cut to the shot of happy-time
god Mothrah, who is weeping.
Hmmmm.
Plot Thickens
The plot thickens: the Mar-
tian is really a political refugee
fleeing from a nearby Ruritan-
ia where her father (the King?
you betcha, the King) has been
foully done dirty, lethally in
fact.
Amnesiac Martian-Girl, Ja-
pan's answer to Moon-Maid,
predicts danger around this qui-
escent volcano-type locale. The
crowd poopoos her. Saaay, this
place looks familiar . . . rum-
ble, crash, and RODAN'S
BACK! Hah, you foolish earth-
lings.
The two fairy-sprites' ship is
about to sail. But wait — the
Martian again says no. Gruff
ship captain brushes her off and
sails.
Comes the night, our balsa
mockup is bravely battling the
waves, and HOOOHAAA, ole
buddy GODZILLA, king of the
monsters, breathing a fiery ray
of halitosis, incinerates our
hapless tars. Rodan's noisy
atunt flying overhead has roused
him from his deep dream of
peace.
Egg or Meteorite?
Settling back with our pop-
corn, we happily await the in-
evitable. Sure enough, the mete-
orite—remember the meteorite
—starts acting up. One fine
night, the egg (it's not just a
plain meteorite, it's an egg that
fell from the sky, see) opens
up and WHOOSH it's . . .
GHIDRAH THE THREE-
HEADED MONSTER, spread-
ing j°y and tractor beams from
(Continued on Page 3)
*
"PERSPECTIVE*
I
An Ostrich No Longer
The following: is the text of a report made by SA President
Bill Broyles to the Student Senate on the Recent TISA conference.
—Ed.
The TISA Presidents and Leadership Conference was
held on October 1-3 in Wimberly, Texas. Approximately
60 delegates from over twenty Texas colleges attended.
The bulk of the formal program was devoted to a study
of leadership techniques and principles of group action.
These sessions were conducted by psychologists and
staff of the Texas Union of the University of Texas, and
Avere of a general high quality and relevence to campus
problems.
By far the most beneficial part of the program, how-
ever, was the contact with students from other Texas
colleges. Rice students too often overlook the necessity
of a state-wide environment conducive to academic excel-
lence. The social, intellectual, and legal inhibitions imposed
on many of this state's students and faculties are part
of a general state-wide atmosphere that would shock the
ordinary Rice student."
The day has passed when Rice could consider itself
an oasis in a barren academic desert. No university has
ever achieved excellence in such a climate—Harvard is
Harvard in part because there is a Yale, a Princeton, and
a Middlebury, because there is a climate of ideas and
attitudes, in the general community, which support its
ideals and endeavors.
A large number of the student leaders I met had no
conception of the values of a university, not because they
were ignorant, but because they had never been exposed
to, or told of, these values. Texas, for example, has 11%
of the schools listed on probation by the American Asso-
ciation of University Professors. It ranks eleventh, in
percentage increase of appropriations for higher educa-
tion, tenth in funds provided per $1000 of personal
income, and this among only the figures for both sta-
tistics computed in the fifteen Southern states.
Rice cannot, like an ostrich, ignore the problems of
higher education in Texas.
As students, our efforts are necessarily circumscribed.
We can, however, seek out contact with students at other
schools and share with them our ideas, our experiences,
and our values, learning from them in return.
Last weekend, the effect of such contact was sig-
nificant. Not only did I emerge with different and more
realistic ideas about Rice's place in Texas education, but
some of the other students returned, I should hope, with
a different concept of the scope and possible significance
of their activities as students.
Often, in the log jam of parochial and authoritarian
education, it is only the students who have some freedom
to act, and thus, some influence for improvement and
change. It is in our interest to encourage them to so act.
I would urge that the Senate seriously consider full
participation in such activities of TISA as this Leader-
ship Conference, the Conference on Higher Education
in Texas, to be held in February, and the State Convention,
to be held in Houston in March.
In support of this proposal, I urge the Senate to con-
sider the deletion of the BY-LAW provision E, division Y,
which states that expenses associated with TISA shall
not exceed one hundred dollars a year. I suggest that the
expenditure of such funds be left to the discretion of the
Senate, giving it the ability to spend more or less as it
sees fit.
The stakes are too high to set such arbitrary limits;
the advantages to be gained on a long-term basis are too
great. To attract the people Rice must attract, as teach-
ers, speakers and students, it can not sit idly secure in
its own narrow world.
11
...,s v JsA
THE RICE THRESHER OCTOBER 7, 196 5—P AGE 2
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Kelly, Hugh Rice. The Rice Thresher (Houston, Tex.), Vol. 53, No. 4, Ed. 1 Thursday, October 7, 1965, newspaper, October 7, 1965; Houston, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth244951/m1/2/?q=technical+manual: accessed July 18, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Rice University Woodson Research Center.