The Rice Thresher, Vol. 88, No. 6, Ed. 1 Friday, September 22, 2000 Page: 2 of 24
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THE RICE THRESHER OPINION FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 22, 2000
the Rice Thresher
Brian Stoler
Editor in Chief
Jos£ Luis Cubria,
Mariel Tam
Managing Editors
Michael Nalepa
Opinion Editor
Welcoming students at
the humanities dance
No students approached him about the problem, no one had to
protest the plan loudly for the administration to make a change —
Malcolm Gillis heard about a student problem and came up with a
solution.
When the Rice president learned about the absurd plan to charge
students for tickets to attend the dance performances commemorat-
ing the opening of the Humanities Building, he was shocked. Gillis
had the President's Office arrange for one free performance open
only to students only as well as 25 free student tickets to two other
performances for the public.
We appreciate his concern—now students won't have to shell out
$5 a pop to see classmates and friends dance in a unique event. More
importantly, we think the free tickets will actually encourage stu-
dents to attend the dance who otherwise wouldn't have gone.
A resolution
without conflict
Kermit the Frog said it's not easy being green. At Rice, however,
it's not really all that difficult.
The Student Association Senate has made much ado about noth-
ing with its green space preservation resolution. It's all well and good
to affirm the student body's appreciation of grassy, open fields, but
to whom are we proving this? No one opposes the preservation of
campus green space. In fact, the administration has repeatedly
affirmed its commitment to green areas. Vice President for Student
Affairs Zenaido Camacho has even said that when designing the new
construction projects, preservation of green space was the
administration's highest priority.
The matter certainly isn't important enough to warrant an official
senate resolution. However well-intentioned their actions may be,
the senate shouldn't pass unnecessary resolutions — they dilute the
value of other resolutions. When students and administration agree
on an issue, it is not an issue.
Biting the plan
that feeds you
Students who take unfair advantage of the meal plan claim that
they're just trying to get their money's worth. But future meal plan
buyers could find that harder and harder to do: Stolen food costs
money for somebody, and you could find yourself paying for it
through hikes in meal plan prices.
Taking more than your fair share of pre-packaged items, espe-
cially ice cream, milk and yogurt, or getting more food to give to
friends without meal plans, is stealing. Some students justify it by
citing high meal plan prices. But College Food Service is not a for-
profit business; in fact, it is intended to break even every year. Meal
plans cost so much because that's the price of operating eight small
locations. Sure, we could have cheaper food — if students were
willing to settle for one dining hall to serve all of campus or a drop in
food quality.
Instead of focusing on dead issues of meal plan structure and cost,
students should focus their energies on telling Food and Housing
ways they can improve on-campus dining — they're very receptive
to suggestions. You can talk your college food representative or
send e-mail to CFS at food@rice.edu. Have problems with food not
being hot and fresh when you get it? Think there should be a fourth
meal for late-night snacks? Want more fried mushrooms? Tell F&H
— they really want to know what students want.
Accessing our money
Thanks to the continuing efforts of the Student Center's staff,
there will soon be a new place to bank and withdraw cash on campus.
Considering its security, hours of availability and proximity to
places such as the Campus Store, the ATM will be ideally located —
in the convenience store, itself proof of the Student Center's never-
ending quest to improve the building's resources for students and
the greater Rice community.
£
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
Martel founding needs
discussion, support
To the editor:
We are listening. We have been
meeting with the college governing
bodies, the Student Association, mas-
ters and presidents, and we have meet-
ings scheduled with the college presi-
dents, the Academic Affairs Commit-
tee of the Board of Trustees and 1'resi-
dent Gillis. We will continue to listen.
There are two parts to the plan for
populating Martel College, liie first
part, the formation of the Founding
Committee, was approved by the Com-
mittee of College Masters last spring.
This document can be viewed on the
Martel College Web site: http://
www. ruf. rice. edu/~martelcg.
The second part of the plan was
proposed to the college masters and
presidents at their meeting on Sept. 6.
This was a list of "General Principles"
to be considered and discussed by the
masters and presidents. The discus-
sion was lively, there were changes
made to the list, and there have been
changes made since. If you read the
approved part (first part) of the plan
on the Web site, you will learn (see
Item 8) that the plan of action for
recruiting students to Martel will be
developed by the Founding Commit-
tee with the approval of the "Commit-
tee of College Masters in consultation
with the college presidents."
When the Founding Committee
has an approved plan of action for
recruiting students to Martel and
other "start-up" procedures, we hope
that the Rice University community
will support their efforts. It is impor-
tant to the whole campus for Martel
to have a good strong start.
Regarding the editorial in the
Thresher ("Confusing the freshmen,"
Sept. 15) to postpone Mattel's first
Orientation Week to fall 2002, there
are several impacts of that proposal
that were not discussed:
1. Martel would be a college with-
out freshmen during academic year
2001-'02, sophomores during2(X)2-'03,
juniors during 2003-'04 and seniors
during 2004-'05. Martel would be an
unbalanced college for four years.
2. The 77zres/j£rhassuggested that
Martel could continue recruiting up-
perclassmen to try to achieve a bal-
anced college over time. Again, we
think it is totally unfair to impose the
task of continually having to recruit
students to work toward a balanced
college upon Martel.
3. Hie Ihresher suggested that
Martel could recruit freshmen enter-
ing in 2001 after they have been
through O-Week in their assigned
college as opposed to their experienc-
ing a Martel O-Week. Would this not
bea much moredifficult task for Martel
and a greater hardship for freshmen?
Arthur and Joan Few
Martel College masters
Christian groups do
not threaten diversity
To the editor:
In his column ("Christian recruit-
ing begins to ignore campus diver-
sity,"Sept. 8), Michael Nalepa implies
that Christian groups that post adver-
tisements in the colleges or in the
Thresher threaten campus diversity.
Two of Mr. Nalepa's arguments
are easy to challenge. He worries
that such ads make the parents of
new non-Christian students uncom-
fortable. I do not doubt that some
parents viewing such ads may fear
for the religious (or irreligious) pu-
rity of their children, but if groups at
Rice were to take these or analo-
gous parental worries into account,
there would be no advertising by
any group whose views might be
controversial to others — that is, no
advertising whatsoever. 'Hie proper
response to any such parents is a
lesson in the cultural geography of
the United States. Mr. Nalepa also
implies that such advertising hints
that Rice University has a religious
affiliation. However, it is unclear how
advertising that has not been offi-
cially endorsed by the university
could convey such an impression.
In any case, I suspect that most in-
coming students and their parents
know of Rice's nonsectarian status.
More serious is Mr. Nalepa's
charge that such adsundermine Rice
Diversity Training. That training, we
are told, seeks to "let new students
know that there are all sorts of dif-
ferent tolks at Rice and that they
should accept and respect the people
around them," a goal that is alleg-
edly undermined by an ad, signed
by 33 faculty and staff members,
that appeared in the Thresher on
Sept. 1. However, this is a spurious
notion of diversity that says, in ef-
fect, "We accept and respect you as
long as you (oryour faculty and staff
supporters) keepyourviewstoyour-
selves." We rightly question the com-
mitment to diversity of those who
say this when race, sex, ethnicity
and sexual orientation are at stake;
why should we not do so when reli-
gion is at stake?
Finally, Mr. Nalepa affirms the
nature of the university as "a place
for sharing ideas and opinions, but
not at the risk of being ethnocentric
and closed-minded." I was not aware
that the signers of the Thresher ad
constituted or spoke for an ethnic
group, but perhaps Mr. Nalepa sim-
ply meant that they advocate a par-
ticular viewpoint not shared by ev-
eryone (or even a majority) on cam-
pus, or that they are convinced of
the truth of their viewpoint and the
falsity of other viewpoints (though
the ad itselfconveyed nosuch claim).
However, if only those ideas may be
shared that are (or are potentially)
accepted by everyone, or those that
make no claim to exclusionary truth,
the university would be a place of
suffocating boredom.
Mr. Nalepa's most telling point is
revealed in his rhetorical question,
"isn't religion one of the three things
not to be discussed over dinner?" In a
society that has from its early days
sought ways to police and manage
religious discourse, certain Christian
groups are transgressors that cheer-
fully violate established norms. TTiis
type of behavior, while highly prized
in academia when other typesof norms
are at stake, is still uncomfortable to
many when normsgoverningreligious
discourse are at stake. 'ITiere are rea-
sons for this, and by no means are all
of them bad reasons. But we should
keep a basic principle in mind. It is
true that when such expression deni-
grates other persons or groups it pre-
sents other problems, to say noth-
ing of expression that incites others
to acts of harm. But the ads deni-
grate no one and certainly do not
incite anyone, nor does Mr. Nalepa
imply that they do. They do not,
then, transgress norms to which we
See NALEPA, Page 4
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Stoler, Brian. The Rice Thresher, Vol. 88, No. 6, Ed. 1 Friday, September 22, 2000, newspaper, September 22, 2000; Houston, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth443037/m1/2/: accessed April 19, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Rice University Woodson Research Center.