The Rice Thresher (Houston, Tex.), Vol. 70, No. 1, Ed. 1 Wednesday, July 7, 1982 Page: 2 of 12
twelve pages : ill. ; page 20 x 14 in.View a full description of this newspaper.
Extracted Text
The following text was automatically extracted from the image on this page using optical character recognition software:
Curriculum proposal
is little improvement
The curriculum proposal now being considered, though
earnestly developed by a diverse group of Ripe faculty members
to provide what they see as a broad education, both limits the
freedom of choice Rice students have come to expect and
creates a discrepancy between what is necessary for a broad
education and what is not.
Two of the chief objectives behind the new curriculum
proposal center on the over-availability of "roll" courses and
the fact that, in the present system, students may take
advantage of course cross-indexing for distribution. In other
words, cross-indexing allows a math major to fulfill a social
science distribution requirement by taking a statistics course
cross-indexed as a sociology class, and so on. Under the new
proposal, students would not be able to take courses in that
manner. And "rolls" would be eliminated, most likely by course
certification through the provost.
The foundation of a Rice education lies in the Honor
System, a system that actually works with surprising success.
And the Honor System influences all aspects of a Rice
education. Abuse of the present system (excessive rolls or
excessive cross-indexing) is, at most, minimal. The vast, vast
majority of Rice students take a wide variety of courses, as
dictated by the present distribution requirements and their own
personal interests. Few students leave this campus without at
least a smattering of knowledge from many different fields.
Rice students are fortunate that they can so freely choose their
courses, and though a small minority of students look for the
easiest way out, that should not be sufficient reason to take
away the privilege from the remainder of the student body.
The omission of a foreign language requirement from the
proposal is perhaps the weakest facet of the curriculum. Why
will a course in philosophy or religion benefit a student more
than a class in Spanish? Both should really be included to
incorporate the breadth of knowledge the proposed curriculum
advocates. A foreigh language requirement should certainly be
an integral part of a curriculum with any scope.
It is certainly true that any of the courses recommended by
the new proposal can be valuable to the Rice student. However,
the proposal does not really seem to be a particular
improvement over the less constrained system Rice now
employs, especially when one recognizes that the average Rice
student currently receives almost the same education the
proposal offers, but with a freedom of choice.
—Jay Grob
THRESHING-IT-OUT
Tucker's task brings
praise from student
To the editor:
I'd like to take this opportunity
to express my respect and
admiration for women's basketball
Coach Linda Tucker. She was
almost single-handedly responsi-
ble for making the team's trip to
Puerto Rico possible. After being
told that the athletic department
would provide no money for the
trip (typical, so typical), she agreed
to number all of the wooden seats
in the football stadium-there must
be 50,000 of the little bastards—in
exchange for plane fare. Though
the whole team took part in the
project, Coach Tucker had to do
most of the arduous job herself,
since most of the team had daytime
jobs to attend to. Her unselfish
dedication to the team—above and
beyond the -call of duty—is most
praiseworthy.
Matt Petersen
WRC '83
■CUSSl
mm
55
IB
EXPANDING THE HEDGES/by Chris Ekren
Jonathan Schell's opus on the
supposedly unique evils of nuclear
arms has been available as a book
for several months now, having
previously been offered in
segments between the trendy front
and scotch ad back covers of the
New Yorker. Suddenly, "nuclear
awareness" has become important
in America. The Ground Zero
Movement, a reorganization of
those forces that have constantly
demanded lower U.S. defense
preparedness, has gathered new
strength and purpose. Having
obsessed itself during the seventies
with political indiscretions, pop
psychology and the economy, the
national media has discovered that
we are still preparing to fight a war,
that people die in war, and that
dying in a nuclear war is a
particularly nasty way to go.
Schell's New Yorker essays
circle about endlessly exclaiming
how awful nuclear war is, and how
senseless it is to close one's eyes
and pretend the potential for
oblivion does not exist. Granted
that nuclear war is bad, Mr.
Schell's proposed method to
decrease the threat of war is
unsatisfactory. In public events
promoting the threat of war, Schell
has argued for a bilateral nuclear
freeze. Unfortunately, signing a
document with the Soviet Union
setting arbitrary weaponry levels
will not appreciably lower the risk
of war. The fate of the Helsinki
Accord on human rights
(remember?) is a strong indication
of the Soviet attitude towards
inconvenient treaties. Our Carter-
emasculated CIA is in no position
to verify the Red Army's treaty
compliance, and the best satellite
cannot count the number of
warheads on the tip of a silo-
encased mjssile. The Soviet
proclivity for such extra-curricular
activities as murder in Afghanistan
belies Mr. Brezhnev's professions
of benign intent.
The dangers of an unverifiable
arms freeze are dismissed by Schell
and other neo-pacifists, who argue
that enough arms exist to destroy
the world several times over. The
fallacies of this argument are
many. It assumes that all weapons
are coupled with delivery systems,
which they are not. The U.S. has
thousands of warheads, but only
around 500 of them are coupled
with a delivery system that could
survive a determined first strike.
The tremendous Soviet expendi-
ture in civil defense can only be
explained in terms of a belief that
nuclear war is survivable and
worth surviving.
Schell also assumes that there is
no such thing as a limited nuclear
war. Whatever the U.S. and Soviet
official line may be, the military
directorates of both countries
accept the tactical validity of
theatre nuclear forces. Hence the
Soviet fear of U.S. Europe-based
Pershing missiles and parallel
development of whole families of
intermediate range missiles dating
from the early sixties. Officers in
both armies are taught limited
nuclear war techniques.
Schell constantly refers to
nuclear war as being unique,
unlike any other type of war.
Wrong. The bottom line in war is
simple: people die. Slowly dying
from radiation is no more
distressing than slowly dying from
poison gas, a la Afghanistan. The
blinding flash and mushroom
cloud of a nuclear blast is but one
dramatic manifestation of man's
inhumanity to man. Given the
barbarity of the Soviet regime, well
.documented by Solzhenitsyn, we
are damned to maintain a margin
of safety until a system of mutual
weapons verification is devised.
.While qualitatively the most
deadly weapon in existence, the
threat of massive mutual nuclear
destruction is probably the only
thing that has prevently the U.S.
and the U.S.S. R from going to
war at times.
Intentions are even harder to
verify than hardware, but one
thing is certain: Inasmuch as we
will only use our nuclear weapons
if attacked by the Soviets, we have
nothing to fear if we keep current
force levels and Soviet intentions
are truly peaceful. True, by
disarming itself or making it clear
that it is unwilling to match Soviet
nuclear blackmail, the U.S. can
reduce the threat of nuclear war.
The Soviets don't really need
nuclear weapons. Their
conventional arms superiority is
sufficient to roll over Europe.
Disarming ourselves without
verification is playing into the
hands of totalitarianism. The
result of democratic Europe's
backboneless capitulation to
Hitler's show of force and
promises should be obvious. Some
things are worth fighting for, dying
for: we can defend western
democracy as an armed country,
or let our grandchildren defend
themselves in the helpless manner
of Polish shipworkers, who know
that freedom has a price.
Hi
WDECLED
nrcconcit
JAY GROB
Editor
SUSAN BROWN
Business Manager
Jeanne Cooper News Editor
Todd Cornett Advertising Manager
Kathryn Mason Managing Editor
Mike Gladu Photography Editor
Gwen Richard Fine Arts Editor
Steve Bailey Back Page Editor
Richard Dees Senior Editor
Matt Petersen Copy Editor
John Heaner Associate Editor
Patty Cleary Assistant Editor
Contributing Editors Michclc Gillespie,
Ronald Ehmke, Chris Ekren
Staff Dave Collins, David Wicks, Bill Bonner,
David Steffens, Ian Davidson, Joseph Halcyon
Seville Bureau Tom Morgan, Sandy Wasson
The Rice Thresher, the official student newspaper at Rice University since 1916, is published each Friday
during the school year, except during examination periods and holidays, by the students of Rice
University. Editorial and business offices are located on the second floor of the Rice Memorial Center.
P.O. Box 1892, Houston, Texas 77251. Telephone (713) 527-4801 or 527-4802. Advertising information
available upon request. Mail subscription rate: S20.00 domestic, $4000 international, (via first class
mail). The opinions expressed herein are not necessarily those of anyone except the writer. Obviously.
©1982 The Rice Thresher All rights reserved.
The Rice Thresher, July 7, 1982, page 2
Upcoming Pages
Here’s what’s next.
Search Inside
This issue can be searched. Note: Results may vary based on the legibility of text within the document.
Tools / Downloads
Get a copy of this page or view the extracted text.
Citing and Sharing
Basic information for referencing this web page. We also provide extended guidance on usage rights, references, copying or embedding.
Reference the current page of this Newspaper.
Grob, Jay. The Rice Thresher (Houston, Tex.), Vol. 70, No. 1, Ed. 1 Wednesday, July 7, 1982, newspaper, July 7, 1982; Houston, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth245503/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.