The Rice Thresher (Houston, Tex.), Vol. 71, No. 13, Ed. 1 Friday, November 18, 1983 Page: 5 of 24
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THRESHING IT OUT
state schools have done for years;
let the athlete pass enough hours to
retain eligibility, and make no
pretense at giving him an
education.
As things stand now, the
situation at Rice is not fair to the
athletes themselves, who suffer
under the double burden of
playing football against teams that
keep beating them, and attempting
to deal with academic pressures
from courses that are too difficult
for them. It's not fair to the
students, either, who now find
President Hackerman attempting
to show that athletes will not have
special, lower academic standards,
by lowering the academic
standards of the entire university.
If the alumni want a winning
football team, let them have it, but
not accompanied by by all the
hypocrisy that has been flowing
from the President's office the last
few weeks.
... Of course, Rice could simply
eliminate the football program and
go back to being an educational
institution, but that's not very
likely. I'm glad I am graduating
while a Rice degree is still worth
something (I hope).
John Calhoun
Jones '84
Return the Owls
to the students
To the editor:
Shannon Jacobs is right
(Thresher, Nov. 4, page 7.) When
you read in the sports pages that
Rice alumni want Rice to make the
"firm commitment" to have
winning football, don't be misled.
Most alumni, and virtually all
alumni of recent vintage
(excepting members of the R
Association) believe that Rice
ought to admit that NCAA
Division I-A football is corrupt,
and is corrupting to academic
institutions — especially to small
ones like Rice.
I'll bet there are students at UT
or A&M who enjoy playing
football for fun. We could still play
UT, A&M et al. in a reclaimed
SWC (all non-scholarship) while
their semi-pro teams do whatever
they need to do to win (if they wish
to continue as the NFL farm
teams.)
Think of it — athletics for the
students! Inter-school competition
with the benefits Dr. Hackerman
claims for it. No "off-the-books
costs of full scholarships. Give the
stadium to the city or lease it to the
Gamblers.
Richard G. Sullivan
WRC '69
Towards a new
Ivy League
To the Editor:
As a recent alumnus who was a
student when Rice actually was
able to win football games against
Arkansas, Houston and A&M, it is
sad to see the rapid decline of Rice
football.
I do not believe it is possible to
maintain President Lovett's ideal
that Rice athletes should be
scholars first and athletes second if
Rice ever wants to be SWC
champion. To maintain the
academic integrity and the prestige
of Rice, athletes must be subject to
the same rigorous academic
discipline that all recent Rice
students have faced. The problems
of trying to compete with larger
less academically talented players
are not unique. Other small private
academically prestigious schools
such as Duke face the same
problems.
Since Rice cannot compete in
the Southwest Conference, I
propose that Rice leave the SWC
and take the initiative to form a
new conference that would be akin
to the Ivy League. Rice has taken
the initiative before; Rice was one
of the first schools to join the
Southwest conference. The
conference should be made up of
small private schools where
athletics come in second to
scholarship. Some possible
members are Duke, Northwestern,
Vanderbilt, Tulane and TCU.
The formation of a new
conference will not alleviate all the
problems associated with Rice
football. The financial burdens of
increased travel will still be
present. Special development
programs for athletics and
academic tutors for athletes may
still be necessary. But, the
formation of a new conference
would be a decent balance between
going down to Division III and
being forever the ridicule of the
Southwest, and further compro-
mising the academic reputation of
Rice.
Daniel D. Hu
Hanszen '82
Recent grad cites
weak will
To the Editor:
With regard to the proposal to
include "practical" busines
administration courses in the
managerial studies program, I
have one comment. If I had had the
opportunity to register for "ECON
abc: The Historical Basis for and
Current Nuances of Balancing a
Personal Checkbook," I cannot
honestly deny that I would not
have taken the course in my
barbaric efforts to boost my
numeric collegiate benchmark of
self-worth upon which the job
market usually makes first cut
decisions. Best wishes to any who
would fend off such encroach-
ments upon the reputation of my
managerial studies degree.
Mary Ng
Brown '83
Havlak 'murders
history'
To the editor:
Paul Havlak's letter about the
basing of nuclear weapons in
Europe reminds us that soon those
horrible weapons must be disposed
of in a rational manner. But
whereas Mr. Havlak accuses the
Reagan administration of being
willing to murder our allies, he is
guilty himself of the murder of
history.
The original defensive policy of
NATO as invented by John Foster
Dulles was massive retaliation,
which stated that we would
respond to a Soviet invasion of
Western Europe with a massive
nuclear attack on the Soviet Union
itself. This policy was developed
due to the fact that while the
United States dismantled its
conventional forces after the
conclusion of the Second World
War, the Soviets left their armed
forces at wartime levels and left
them in Eastern Europe to protect
the people there from the "vile"
influences of democracy and
freedom.
With the growth of the Soviet
strategic forces in the 1960s, the
Europeans realized that the policy
of massive retaliation was no
longer a credible deterrent to the
Soviets. The result was thzforce de
frappe of France, started by
Charles de Gaulle. He realized that
it was not safe to assume that an
American president would risk
destruction of the United States to
save Western Europe from a
conventional Warsaw Pact attack.
West German Chancellor
Helmut Schmidt also realized this
and in 1979 requested that the
Carter administration deploy
\
weapons to counter the Soviet SS-
20's. Schmidt still supports the
deployment of these missiles. That
we "forced" the missiles on
Western Europe, Mr. Havlak, is
not clear to me.
Mr. Havlak also asserts that
deploying missiles in Europe
would provoke the Soviets "to
escalate their installation of high
megatonnage nukes in Eastern
Europe." The Soviets have
planned for the past couple of
years to deploy a new generation of
intermediate-range missiles in
Eastern Europe regardless of the
deployment of NATO missiles.
With regard to the ability to
count cruise missiles, that is not the
crux of the verification problem.
Ever since the Verification Pact of
the Nixon administration, every
American President has stated that
we would allow Soviet negotiators
onto American and Western
European territory to ensure that
the terms of the arms negotiation
treaties are kept. The Soviets,
moreover, have not.
The Soviets even shot down the
idea of ensuring that the SALT I
treaty was obeyed by allowing
satellites to count missiles in their
silos. Every time an American
satellite would fly over the Soviet
Union, the missile silos would
remain covered.
In short, if we are going to get
the Soviets to negotiate in good
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The Rice Thresher, November 18, 1983, page 5
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Ekren, Christopher. The Rice Thresher (Houston, Tex.), Vol. 71, No. 13, Ed. 1 Friday, November 18, 1983, newspaper, November 18, 1983; Houston, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth245545/m1/5/: accessed July 18, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu.; crediting Rice University Woodson Research Center.