The Thresher (Houston, Tex.), Vol. 40, No. 2, Ed. 1 Wednesday, September 24, 1952 Page: 2 of 4
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Two
THE T H RESHBR
WEDNESDAY, SEPT. 24. lft l
The Phantom Offers Free
Beer 7o Astute Riceites
By The Phantom
I can forsee nothing but total collapse and decay for the
Eice Institute in this coming school year. In the Gargantuan
time of three months (June through August) nothing has been
accomplished to solve the momentous problems which faced the
Institute at the close of the last school year, problems of such
a catastrophic nature that their
serious by the elimination of one
street and completely aggravated by
the addition of lights to the North
Hall parking lot, a serious wrong
that only upperclassmen can under-
stand. And, horror of horrors, the
television set, which was practically
the only successful crusade on the
campus last year, is not yet in cor-
rect operation.
What, I ask you, can conceivably
be the future of an Institution which
allows such insidious practices to be
practiced? I shudder when I think
of the consequences if such situa-
tions are allowed to exist, and give
thanks that I for one will not be
around when the eventual collapse
comes
(Editor's Note: The writer in an
expansive mood offers a free bottle
of beer to anyone who can identify
him from this column and is able to
give his full name. All answers
should be given to the Editor within
the week.)
very solution presents problems
which are in some cases in-
comprehensible for the intelligence
of man, man at the Rice Institute,
at any rate.
"What are" these problems?'',
some of our more stupid freshmen
may ask, not realizing that their
own imbecility is one of the most
pressing problems that the upper-
classmen face this and every year.
But the freshman imbecility is not
one of the problems left over from
last year (or is it?). The problems
of which I speak are those which a
few far-sighted upperclassmen at-
tempted to solve last year, but un-
successfully because of the complete
inability of their fellow upperclass-
men to realize the gravity of the
situations presented to them.
Take a look around you! We still
have a preferential voting on this
campus, we still have an unsolved
parking problem, made even more
From The Top of The Lamp Post. . .
By AMTC
There a George Price cartoon which runs like this.
A busy corner of New York with a flow of people going each
way. In the center of the cartoon is a lampost, the variety
with two name plates hanging from arms at the top. Standing
on these nameplate arms is a man. He seems to be quietly but
intently watching the people
below. Two policemen are
standing below looking up at
this man and one is saying to the
other. . ."All I can get out of him
Sarge, is that he's an interested by-
stander of the passing parade."
As did every early arriving stu-
dent we received a beaming wel-
come from Thelmus, comptroller of
Roost Kofffee. After assuring us
that Roost coffee would be better
than ever ("last year it was made
for the gentlemen; this year it's go-
ing to be made for the ladies."),
Thelmus said that he'thought maybe
we'd have booth service. Yes, the
price of coffee would stay at 7 cents,
he thought, but when we tried to
pin him down on other matters he
flashed a grin and said "Don't quote
me." It doesn't take long to catch
on the standard Rice answer#
More U. S. foreign personnel will
come from Southern and Western
colleges, ending the Ivy League's
one-time monopoly in diplomats.—
"Quick"—Well hot durn.
Yesterday was the fortieth anni-
versary of the first freshman class
at Rice. Seems only yesterday.
Signs of the Times—It's gotten to
Athe point where you can't drive an
inch on the campus without meeting
a sign. One way signs keep you from
going out the Main entrance and
channel you out a side entrance.
Stop signs were set up to avert
wrecks on the corner of the dorms
and the library. It would seem that
someone went sign-happy however.
We can't seem to get anyone to
claim the three-way stop at the cor-
ner of the library where the road
in front of the statue used to run.
Dean McBride says that he thought
only .one should be put up and that
one on the road leading into the T.
Mr. Willason, whose men actually
pounded them into the ground, says
he just followed instructions. Won-
der if it would be possible to yank
out the supurfluous signs on main
road. No traffic hazard will result
and one will be eliminated. Imagine
the pile up of traffic during the
rush hours if those signs remain.
We feel the road around the library
and Lovett should be a right of way
street to avoid traffic congestion
during busy hours. At least its
worth a try.
While we're on the subject of im-
provements on campus. The front
elevator is working this. year. How-
ever, there is a little notice pasted
above the punch buttons which
kindly informs the riders that the
elevator will remain in operation
only as long as it is not mistreated.
Therefore, leave us not mistreat
the elevator. By the way, the ele-
vator does not run to the basement,
so why try? The elevator is an in-
strument with a mind of its -own
which deeply resents being sent on
unnecessary trips to and fro. Treat-
ed gently, it will 'co-operate.
This is to introduce the institution
of the year. . .the Literary Score
Box. At the moment all lits are bat-
Tweswex
Entered as second class matter, October 17, 1916, at the Post Office,
Houston, Texas, under the act of March S, 1879.
Subscription Rate 91.00 Per Year.
Represented by National Advertising Service, Inc., 420 Madison Ave., New York. City.
Published every Friday of the regular school year except during holiday and
examination periods by the students of the Rice Institute. Editorial and
Advertising offices are in the Pondren Library on the campus.
Editor >, „ AUyce Tinsley Cole,
Business Manager Soger Bonney
President Greets
(Continued from Page 1)
Everyone of you as a freshman
must study English language and
literature. There may be a few of
you who will question the value of
time spent in that way. There may
be a few of you who would prefer
studying some technical subject in-
stead.
ENGLISH
After long experience in business
and professional fields, most people
place a tremendous importance on
an understanding of the English
language, upon the ability to convey
ideas with precision and force, on
the power to use words to create
moods which will influence the ac-
tion of others. Precise use of lan-
guage is one of the marks of a cul-
tivated man; and it is an objective
whose full attainment is achieved
by far too few.
In addition, you will all be expect-
ed to study history, to try to under-
stand the place our civilization occu-
pies in the continuing stream of
man's development. We certainly
face an unknown future. We must
move ahead; but we cannot look
ahead. We can, however, look back,
and possibly avoid making again
some of the mistakes we have made
over and over again in the past.
MATH 100
And then to touch on a seeming-
ly painful subject, most of you will
be expected to study Some mathe-
matics. This is apparently a source
of anguish to a few. Yet it seems
to me that only in mathematics has
man's method of thinking been so
isolated and separated from its sub-
ject matter that one can have rea-
son and lojBfic in pure form.
Mathematics has been a univer-
sity subject since the earliest days
of the university, back beyond the
Middle Ages to the Groups at Ath-
ens and Alexandria. Some 10 or 20
years ago it bagan to fall into dis-
favor in many high schools, and stu-
dents came to the end of the high
school course without any signifi-
cant acquaintance with it. During
the war, however, mathematics was
found not .only to be of the utmost
practical value to officers and tech-
nicians in the army and navy, but to
be the easiest method of distin-
guishing between those with a ca-
pacity for abstract thought and
and those whose thinking remained
on an elementary plane. Ever since
its founding, The Rice Institute has
had a distinguished department of
mathematics; and it has made a ma-
jor contribution to the training of
those who have spent their college
years here. And so all of you will
study English and history and
mathematics, and these will provide
more common ground on whieh you
can stand together.
EXTRA-CURRICULAR
But, as I said, your academic
work is only part of the influence
under which you will come in the
next years. The extra-curricular in-
fluences are everywhere around you.
The Rice Institute has a great deal
to offer you in many ways; but you
must do your share in finding it and
in assimilating it. In the first place,
we have a tradition of culture and
scholarship. You will find students
and members of the faculty who
ting zero, which is to be expected
since school is only open a week.
The lits with an asterisk by their
name are the ones who&e constitu-
tion definitely commits them to one
literary meeting a month.
Sept. Total
EBLS* 0 0
VCLS* 0 0
SLLS* 0 0
OWLS 0 0
OKLS 0 0
PALS 0 0
CRLS 0 0
, MELS 0 0
This will be published once a
month. . . .that the students may
know.
liave studied in all part* of the
world. From time to time. We shall
have visiting lecturers to bring dif-
ferent points of view on a wide var-
iety of subjects. Whether jwu listen
to them, or whether yoa do not, is
largely left up to you. But through
them, as well as through our li-
brary, you have the opportunity for
contact with a whole wide world of
scholarship.
ARCHITECTURE
The Rice Institute is also especi-
ally proud of its architectural tradi-
tion. It will repay you to study our
buildings. Lovett Hall exemplifies
in its rich detail the tradition of me-
ticulous and leisurely craftsmanship
of the old warld. It will repay your
careful study. The newer buildings,
such as Abercrombie Laboratory
and the Pondren Library, represent
emphasis of a present day builder
on the beauty of simplicity and the
adaptation to the intended use. They
also repay your careful study.
It is a tradition of lqng standing
among Rice students to protect and
respect our buildings. Even on the
oldest you will find few disfiguring
scratches or marke, and few signa-
tures of those whose greatest liter-
ary accomplishment is a name on a
wall.
ADJUSTMENTS
And then again a large part of
your college training will consist of
your adjustment to your fellow stu-
dents. You must learn from each
other, and how to be considerate of
another and of his desires. Particu-
larly those of you living in the
dormitories find yourself crowded in-
to relatively small space with num-
erous other people. Each one feels
just as crowded as you do. You may
want to throw your clothes on the
floor for your roommate to pick up;
but he would rather throw his on
the floor for you to pick up. Many
of you may have your first experi-
ence in taking care of yourself and
your rooms. You no longer have
your mothers to look after you ta
see that your clothes are washed
and your beds are made, and you
will have to do that yourself. But
such is the penalty of growing up,
and you have here the opportunity
to develop and practice those quali-
ties, rather difficult to describe and
formulate, but not too difficult to
recognize, and which characterize
the men and women who are effec-
tive leaders in their community.
NOT HIGH SCHOOL
If you do not already know it, you
will find out, and rather soon, that
a university differs from a high
school in many ways. It is a good
deal more than a teaching institu-
tion. It is a center of scholarship, a
place for cultivating .independent
thought. The faculty is not expected
to teach you, but to guide your in-
dividual study. They are not here
for the purpose of repeating to you
what they read in a book. You are
expected to read the books your-
selves. They are here to give you
the benefit of their own experience,
carefully considered and judged by
the most' rigorous of scholastic
standards.
One of the things you may find
difficult to do is to study suffici-
ently, in the face of the opportuni-
ties to do many other things. Some
of you were accustomed to studying
in high school. Others of you prob-
ably found the work so easy that
very little studying was necessary.
But I think it probable that here
most of you will have to do some
really honest, earqest work, in or-
der to take advantage of your schol-
astic opportunities. It is normally
expected that a college student will
spend two hours of study for each
hour of class. No member of the
faculty is going to watch you while
you do this studying, and no one
will tell you just what to do. You,
yourself, have this responsibility of
using your time to the best advan-
tage. Some of you may have to
spend time in learning how to study,
and in this, perhaps, your teachers
*
can be of some assistance; but no
technique of studying can take the
lace of honist effort
LECTURES"
You will listen to a good many
lectures. Some of them will be in-
spiring and stimulating. Some will
be informative, others may seem to
you to be deadly dull; but I hope
you will never be deluded, by the
idea that your mere physical pres-
ence in the best lecture guarantees
any intellectual development. It is
only what you do yourself with your
own brain that really counts.
The effective academic life is not
an easy one in spite of the belief of
many who are unacquainted with
it. The normal expectation is that
you will put in some two hours of
indiyidual study for each hour in
class and so you will put in a work
week of something like fifty to six-
ty hours. This is no easy schedule,
and those of you who find your
minds working a little more slowly
may need to put in even more time.
But you have been selected be-
cause of your already demonstrated
intellectual ability. With sincere ef-
fort you should be able to do what
is expected of you and do :t well.
NO PROPAGANDA
A university is no place for prop-
aganda. You will not be told what
to think, although it may be sug-
gested what you might think about.
Of course, in these days when
many people are loudly proclaiming
their particular kind of salvation
for the world's troubles, you will *
find plenty to tell y.ou what to think.
They tell you with enthusiasm and
conviction. But this is not the way
of the university, even though some
university people fall into the error.
A university is really a product of
our western ideals of freedom and
democracy. It has grown^as these
ideals hav£ grown over the past
thousand years. If these ideals fail,
our universities will fall with' them.
DEMOCRACY
May I read you a paragraph by
Henry Steel Commager of Columbia
University: "It is easier to make out
the case against communism and
facism than to make out the case
for liberal democracy. For, notwith-
standing a good deal of rhetoric,
the case for the kind system that
the United States and Britain have
evolved is reasonable rather than
(Continued on Page 3)
BEST SELLERS OF THE WEEK
l .Math 100 books (Alas!)
2..Tennis shoes for P.T. 100
3 coffee in the Roost
4. .cokes in the lounge
5 THE ELIZABETHAN
WOMAN and- THE BLIND
BULL, two August produc-
tions by august Rice Profes-
sors.
The Topic - - -
.^(Continued from Page 1) *
anxious questions, "What is it, when
will we know what it is, when does
it happen?"; however some of the
braver souls ventured opinions. The
first of these was a loud and clear
"WORTHLESS!" from a freshman
who for some odd reason wishes to
remain anonymous. Dick Pease and
Richard Bramblett seemed to think
that it is a project pi^t forth by the
faculty- and upperclassmen to help
the freshmen throughout their first
year, while Lynn Baront seemed to
think that it is only the upper class-
men who help the slimes. (Could
be you have something there, Lynn
old boy.) •
The upper classmen (those ether-
eal creatures called juniors, seniors,
and graduates) seemed to think that
whatever it is, the freshqiep needed
it and deserved it. As far as a defi-
nition is concerned, the only one we
could get out of these creatures
(upper classmen,. that is) is that
Freshman Guidance consists of
whatever enters into the minds, of
the section leaders and the even
more complex and confusing minds
of the officers of the- Freshman
Guidance Committee.
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The Thresher (Houston, Tex.), Vol. 40, No. 2, Ed. 1 Wednesday, September 24, 1952, newspaper, September 24, 1952; Houston, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth230906/m1/2/: accessed July 18, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu.; crediting Rice University Woodson Research Center.