The Rice Thresher, Vol. 88, No. 28, Ed. 1 Friday, April 20, 2001 Page: 3 of 32
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THE RICE THRESHER
Guest column
OPINION
FRIDAY, APRIL 20, 2001
issues
So it*S finally happening. Martel,
having written up a goofy constitu-
tion and having made its timid first
appearance at Beer-Bike, is almost a
college. Nothing you can
do will change this.
Around 150 people are
currently "Martelians" or
"Martelizens" or what-
ever, and some of them
will graduate as such in a
month.
With all the recruit*
ment talk about the ad-
venture of creating a neft
college, a lot of people have
lost sight of the reason
why the board chose to
construct a ninth college: to make it
possible for more undergraduates
wishing to live on campus to do so. (A
possible increase in undergraduate
enrollment is another reason, but let's
leave that for now.) Brown and Jones
Colleges are also being expanded to
work toward that goal. Any student
who's been jacked off campus and
any master who's had to deal with
those students' irate and confused
parents knows this is a worthy cause.
The addition of Martel was sup-
posed to help achieve that goal in
two ways. First, by reducing the
number of upperclassmen currently
at the other colleges through mas-
sive amounts of immediate trans-
fers, it will reduce the competition
for beds there in the short term; and
second, by thinning out the incom-
ing freshman load taken by each
college in the future, freeing up more
rooms for upperclassmen.
The first of these two steps didn't
work.
Adam
Keith
At Lovett College's room jack this
year, we had to k>k off the exact
same number of people as last year.
Even stranger, we had to jack suites
not composed entirely of
freshmen for the first time
in anyone's memory. All
this was in spite of the fact
that we had 25 Lovetteers
transfer to Martel, 14 of
whom are currently liv-
ing on campus at Lovett.
From what I've heard,
the same thing happened
at most of the other col-
leges. Room draws that
were expected to be
bloodless for the first time
in years simply weren't. The widely
held expectation that getting a room
on campus wasn't going to be a cut-
throat waste of time this year prob-
ably defeated itself. I knew entire
suites of people my freshman year
who decided not to enter room jack
given their poor chances of getting a
spot, and I have no doubt that prom-
ises of an easy on-campus room this
year lured people to sign up who
would have otherwise thrown in the
towel.
This year's experience showed
that there is still a significantly larger
number of students who want to live
on campus than the campus can
support, a number that's hard to
measure but larger than one year's
worth of Martel-bound transfers
could satisfy.
So Martel didn't prevent any bro-
ken hearts this year. But it has an-
other card left to play. In addition to
taking current students — which it
will do again after fall 2001 when it
*■
borrows an unknown number of
freshmen from the class of 2005 —
Martel will start directly receiving
its own class in fall 2002.
And this is where Martel's big-
gest potential lies. The fewer rooms
other colleges have to set aside for
freshmen, the happier their room
draws will be for their upperclass-
men. But for that to work, the num-
ber of freshmen in future incoming
classes has to stay the same, or at
most increase marginally.
At some point in February or
March next year, the Office of Stu-
dent Affairs will instruct the colleges
to reserve certain numbers of beds
for the new class. (For the record,
freshman bed counts this year were:
Baker, 80; Brown, 72; Hanszen, 89;
Jones, 78; Lovett, 88; Sid, 88; Wiess,
86; Will Rice, 87.) If the number of
freshman beds at your college hasn't
gone down, then either your college
had an additional wing grafted on to
it, or Martel is a failure.
New beginnings and founding
committees aside, the reason for
Martel's creation was to prevent so
many people from getting jacked. It
must be tempting to raise enroll-
ment, I have no doubt. But while the
administration technically can both
raise enrollment and get more
people on campus, they can't do both
well.
Watch your college's numbers
next year, and hope that the reward
for two years' worth of construction
at Martel is a shinier, happier room
draw.
Adam Keith is Backpage editor and a
Lovett College junior.
Sober since the age of one
Grad students, undergrads should improve relations
There's been quite a bit of dis-
cussion at Rice recently about diver-
sity, mostly in the context of issues
such as race or sexual orientation.
What's interesting is how
little attention another,
much more Rice-specific
diversity topic has re-
ceived: the relationship
between the undergradu-
ate and graduate student
populations at this univer-
sity.
The tension between
these two groups has
bothered me since my
freshman year, but it's
only been during the last
couple of years that I've realized just
how nasty it can get. More distress-
ingly, I've seen that the hostility be-
tween undergraduates and grad stu-
dents isn't just something that oc-
curs here and there between indi-
vidual students; it's a firmly in-
grained aspect of the culture here at
Rice. In other words, grad students
and undergrads are taught and ex-
pected to hate each other, and many
of them seem disturbingly comfort-
able with that dynamic.
Since I've experienced the un-
dergraduate-graduate interaction
from both sides, I figured I might as
well take the opportunity to say that
neither group is innocent when it
comes to perpetuating mutual re-
sentment. As an undergraduate, I
took at least two lab courses in which
my graduate TA had apparently de-
cided ahead of time that each of his
students was a whiny, immature,
grade-grubbing, incompetent rodent
who needed to be put in his place via
a 50/50 mixture of condescension
and dirty looks. Now, I'll admit that
I, along with my most of my peers,
did my share of obsessing over
grades and making silly mistakes in
organic lab, but I've never felt that
undergraduates deserve to be so
completely defined in those terms.
Once I got to graduate school, I
discovered that the undergraduate
students don't exactly have the
healthiest perspective either. Had I
taken the undergraduates' descrip-
tions of grad students at face value, I
would have believed that entering
grad school would irrevocably trans-
form me into a creepy, lecherous,
miserable, smelly, un-
kempt, arrogant, bitter,
resentful lab rat with apoor
command of the English
language and a social life
consisting solely of getting
trashed at Valhalla. I re-
member thinking, "Damn,
I hope those traits aren't
part of my degree require-
ment." (They aren't. 1
checked the General An-
nouncements.)
The remarkable thing
is that I didn't even have to dig out a
thesaurus to write down those ste-
reotypical views of undergraduate
and graduate students. All I had to
do was think back to a few over-
heard remarks, conversations and
excerpts from college Orientation
Week manuals.
It's been said many times before,
but it's worth restating here: The
only reasons two groups persist in
viewing each other in terms of nar-
row stereotypes are (a) that stereo-
types are easy and require no
thought, and (b) that members of
each group conveniently have a
whole other group of people on
whjch to take out their frustration
the instant it arises. This is one of
the central problems in any "diver-
sity issue": the expediency of hav-
ing a specific target at which to di-
rect the less attractive (though nor-
mal) human emotions, such as an-
ger and aggression.
The good news, in the case of
undergraduate-graduate interac-
tions, is that most of the hostility can
be removed if the members of these
groups simply start doing a few more
things together. This isn't a guess
on my part; I've seen it work. I've
seen how much fun undergraduate
students have had in the swing
classes offered by the Rice Social
Dance Society, a group whose most
active members and instructors are
typically graduate students. I per-
sonally experienced one of the big-
f 1 M r\ I j I * * » 13 1
ger thrills of my own life as a grad
student two weeks ago when I musi-
cally accompanied one of my under-
graduate friends during her perfor-
mance at the Artemis Rice concert.
In all such instances, students aban-
don the labels "undergraduate" and
"graduate" and focus instead on what
they have in common. It's true that,
academically, undergraduate and
graduate lifestyles necessarily have
little overlap, but people make the
mistake of assuming that separation
extends to all other aspects of student
life. If we were to abandon just that
one assumption, I think grads and
undergrads would realize how easy it
is for them to not merely tolerate each
other, but actually like each other.
Raj Wahi
student.
is a chemistry graduate
Are they laughing with me or at me?
Owls should attempt to
get full story on Rice
I fell in love with Rice when I
came to Owl Weekend four years
ago.
It was pretty hard not to. Ev-
eryone I was intro-
duced to was happy
and relaxed, and the
campus was beautiful.
Rice seemed to have
non-stop parties and ac-
tivities, and everyone
seemed to be enjoying
themselves. Plus, I was
able to wear shorts
down here, while
spring was still another
month off back home
in Chicago.
After I accepted and came
down to Houston the fall of my
freshman year, I noticed some-
thing — Rice is actually nothing
like Owl Weekend.
The university had been on
its best behavior when I had
come down to visit, and I had
been duped. Not everyone who
went here was blissfully happy,
and there were times when I
was one of them. Life was not
just one big party. Classes were
often hard and the food fre-
quently bad. The college sys-
tem that had sounded so won-
derful on paper began to reveal
its flaws, as its "big happy fam-
ily" image broke down into ex-
clusive groups and cliques.
That's not to say that I would
have gone somewhere else if I
had known what I know now back
then — I've had a wonderful time
here. But it still would have been
nice to have been a little more
informed when I committed to
Rice.
So I have some advice for Owls
this weekend: Try to get the full
scoop. Talk to your hosts and
their friends, and don't just ask
them what they like about Rice.
Be sure to also find out what they
wish they could change about
the university, and what they con-
sider the negative aspects of go-
ing to school here.
These are not things that are
going to come up in any informa-
tion session you go to, and they
won't appear on any of the litera-
ture that the university sends you
in the mail before your accep-
tance deadline.
Try to make sure that you talk
to a broad cross section of stu-
dents here; don't limit yourself to
just speaking with your host and
Michael
Nalepa
her friends. Have conversations
with people of different races,
sexes and appearances. Wander
over to the Student Center, where
you'll encounter a
pretty broad sample of
the Rice population.
Try to find students
who have lived off cam-
pus, because their Rice
experience will be
strikingly different
than your on-campus
host's account of uni-
versity life. And, if
there is an activity or
sport that you are in-
terested in participat-
ing in while here, why not talk to
some people involved in it and
find out what it's like?
Unfortunately, this is going to
require a little extra effort. If you
just follow the Owl Weekend
schedule like I did four years
ago, you will get a very "Leave it
to Beaver"-like image of this
school—heavy on positives, light
on negatives.
If you do decide to come here,
it will be pretty hard not to be
idealistic about Rice. And while
this school is far from perfect, I
have to admit that during the
four years I have been here, it
has certainly tried to be.
The university had
been on its best
behavior when
I came down
to visit, and
I had been duped.
But whatever you decide,
make sure that you go to the
school that is right for you, and
make your decision for the right
reasons. Find out as much as you
can about your options, so that
you make an informed decision.
So get cracking. There are
about 2,700 people here that can
give you the real scoop on being
a student at Rice. Why not intro-
duce yourself?
Michael Nalepa is opinion editor
and a Lovett College senior.
the Rice Thresher
Leslie Liu, Robert Reichle
Editors in Chief
NEWS
Olivia Allison, Editor
Mark Berenson, Asst. Editor
Rachel Rustin, ,4ss(. Editor
Erin Mann, Page Designer
OPINION
Michael Nalepa. Editor
SPORTS
Chris Larson, Editor
Jason Gershman, Asst. Editor
ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT
Mariel Tarn. Editor
Dalton Tonilin. Editor
Angelo Zanola, Asst. Editor
LIFESTYLES
Corey E. Dcvine, Editor
CALENDAR
Carly Kocurek, Editor
BACKPAGE
Alex Fay, Editor
Adam Keith, Editor
PHOTOGRAPHY
Renata Escovar, Editor
Katie Streit, Editor
Laura Wiginton, Editor
COPY
Sarah Ainsworth, Editor
Melissa Bailey, Asst. Editor
David Chien, Illustrator
Adam Lazowska. Online Editor
BUSINESS
Shannon Scott, Business Manager
Robert Lee. Ads Manager
Lindsay Roemmich. Asst. Business Manager
Chris Landry, Classified Ads Manager
Carly Halvorson, Office Manager
Sol Villarreal, Distribution Manager
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Liu, Leslie & Reichle, Robert. The Rice Thresher, Vol. 88, No. 28, Ed. 1 Friday, April 20, 2001, newspaper, April 20, 2001; Houston, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth443074/m1/3/: accessed May 5, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Rice University Woodson Research Center.