The Rice Thresher (Houston, Tex.), Vol. 75, No. 5, Ed. 1 Friday, September 18, 1987 Page: 3 of 24
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THRESHER Opinion
Friday. September 18.1987
How much has Rice changed in the past 30 years?
The French have an adage that "the more
things change, the more they are the same."
Reflecting on the differences at Rice and in
Houston since I was an undergraduate 30 years
ago might at first lead to the conclusion that
radical change has occurred.
Cej^inly Houston's economy was then on
the rise and The Rice Institute, as it was still
called, was the beneficiary of the steady appre-
ciation in the value of its oil stocks. The endow-
ment was still sufficient to provide every Rice
undergraduate with a full-tuition scholarship.
Campus buildings consisted of Lovett Hall,
the Physics Building, Anderson Hall, the Chem-
istry Building, the Engineering Building and
Fondren Library.
The geology and biology buildings and Ham-
man Hall were under construction and the Rice
Memorial Center and Chapel were only in the
planning stages. Student offices and lounge
facilities were crowded into the library base-
ment, along with a coffee shop known as The
Roost.
There were five residential halls—all single-
sex—East, West, North, and South Halls for
men and the newly finished Jones College,
which heralded the beginning of the residential
college system. Before Jones, the few women
students who had university housing lived in a
small apartment building on Banks Street just
off Montrose.
The 1957-58 enrollment was 1,470 men and
405 women. They were part of what was then
branded "The Silent Generation"—students
perceived as being totally concerned with mak-
ing good grades and getting good jobs. The
committed participation in political and social
issues that characterized the 1960's could
hardly have been imagined in the placid days of
mm
TRESHER
Editorial Staff
Editor-in-Chief Michael Raphael
News Editor Michele Wucker
Fine Arts Editor Jen Cooper
Sports Editors Keith Couch, Joel Sendek
Production Manager Mary Elliott
Feature Editor Lisa Gray
Backpage Eds... Lizzette Palmer, Jenny Berry
Photo Editor Dennis Kelley
Senior Editors Lisa Gray, Spencer Greene
Typesetters Linda Bums, Allison Krauth
Assistant News Editors Shelley Fuld, David H. Stewart
Assistant Fine Arts Editor John Montag
Assistant Production Manager Gavin Clarkson
Beyond the Hedges Mary Ashkar
Graphic Artist V. Steve Lait
News Staff Anu Bajaj, Dan Blanton, BifT Clay
Claire dosmaiin, Leigh Anne Duck, Katy Feibleman
Paul Hain, Samantha Hendren, Jim Low, Doug Park
Elise Perachio, Jael Pdnac, Paul Phillips, Tom Senning
David E. Stewart, David H. Stewart, David Stivers, Judd Volino
Fine Arts Staff Robert Boyd, Sam Collins, Anne Divenyi
Stephen Hanson, Miriam Ma, David Nathan
Russell Ross, Eric Salituro, Louis Spiegler, Eileen Vojp
Sports Staff Tariq Ahmed, Sarah Barlyn, Claire Qosmann
Wes Gere, Brian Holmes, Jim Humes
" Steve Nations, Robert Nevill, Anthony Wills
Photography Staff Lawrence Cowsar, Michael Gladu
Ajay Kwatra, Carla Mendiola
Lisa Opper, Harold Turner, James Yao
Production Staff Craig Blome, Dina Dempsey, Wendy Erisman
Wynn Martin, Doug Park, Paul Phillips, Dan Rey-Bear
Bob Rnode, Edward Stewart, Sanjay Vyas
Courier Anne Chang
Constitutional consultant R. Bork
Business Staff
Business Manager ...Carlos E. Soltero
Advertising Manager Lee Finch
Asst. Business Manager Mike Alexander
Ads Production Tony Merritt
Staff Assistant Stuart Morestead
Circulation Christine Gibson
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 Ley addition to the Rice Memorial Center, P.O. Box 1892,
Houston, Texas 77251. Telephone (713) 527-4801 or 527-4802. Adver-
tising information available upon request. Mail subscription rate per
semester: $15.00 domestic, $30.00 international (via first class mail).
The opinions expressed herein are not necessarily those of anyone
except the writer. Obviously. No Thresher was published last week, due
to the Labor Day holiday. You can stop calling.
©1987, The Rice Thresher. All rights reserved.
GUESTCOLUMN
by Jim Bernhard
Dwight Eisenhower's Presidency.
B eyond the hedges, the city of Houston w as in
its early adolescence. Houston might be a
"whisky-and-trombone"town, as one journalist
dubbed it, but it wasn't the major metropolis of
the 1980's. The tallest downtown structures
were the Gulf and Esperson Buildings, 30-
some-odd stories tall; Greenway Plaza was a
quiet residential neighborhood; and where the
Galleria's vast domain now stands was a dirt
road.
Fast food meant the Someburger stand on
Main Street across from campus; in those days
MacDonald was the old man who had a farm,
Jack-in-th-Box was a child's toy, and Colonel
Sanders was just another World War II veteran.
There were three daily newpapers in Houston
then (the now-defunct Press survived until
1964), but only four television channels (2,11,
13 and 8).
Movies such as Jet Pilot with John Wayne and
Janet Leigh, Sayonara with Marlon Brando, and
Witness for the Prosecution with Charles
Laughton were frequented by Rice students at
the downtown Loew's State, Majestic, or Met-
ropolitan, or at the "neighborhoods": The River
Oaks, Alabama, Tower, Bellaire and Village.
For something racier, the naughty Avalon, in the
east end of town, offered films like Maid in
Paris.
Nudity, explicit sex, and profanity, now taken
for granted in most of the media, would have
made a Rice student of 1957 blush. Even the
word "pregnant" was rdfarded as too strong for
Houston's newspapers: if it was absolutely
necessary to allude to that condition, the word
"expectant" was discreetly substituted. A sexual
revolution? What would that be?
Doonesbury
\ RACIAL SENSITIVITY, 1987. |
YOU KNOW, HOWARD, I THINK
\ ONE OF MY PROUDESTLB6AQBS
f IS GOING ID85INCIVIL RIGHTS!f
Professional sports in Houston in 1957 con-
sisted of the Houston Buffaloes, who played
AAA baseball with other teams in the Texas
League in Buff Stadium off the Gulf Freeway.
There were no Oilers, no Astros, no Rockets.
College football was king; and college football
meant the Rice Owls.
Rice Stadium's 72,000 seats were filled to
capacity at virtually every game—there was
even&Thresher editorial urging Rice students to
sit closer together so that more of them could be
squeezed into the stands. The Owls were the
1957-58 Southwest Conference champions, a
title won in a 7-6 victory over Bear Bryant's
Aggies, rated Number One by the national press.
The life of a Rice student must have been very
different then. Well, maybe not.
The Rice Thresher still appears every Friday,
just as it did in 1957. While the preferred comic
strip has changed from Peanuts to Doonesbury,
the essential content seems familiar: concern
about the food service and inadequate parking
facilities, discussion of the status of varsity
athletes, prognostications for the "Owlook" col-
umnist, and anti-Aggie propaganda.
Most important, Rice President William V.
Houston welcomed the incoming freshman
class in 1957 with much the same challenge as
President Rupp greeted this year's class. "The
active pursuit of truth," as Dr. Rupp names it, is
still the purpose of the university, just as it was
way back in 1957, or when the first Rice class
matriculated in 1912, or when the world's first
university was founded, in Alexandria, Egypt,
about 300 B.C.
Oh, yes-one other link in the chain with the
past that should not go unrecorded: the favored
beer-drinking hangout for Rice students in 1957
was an unprepossessing little bar on Bissonnet
called Kay's.
Jim Bernhard, editor of iheThresher in 1957-
58, is a Houston actor, playwright, theater con-
sultant, crossword puzzle constructor, and edi-
tor of Performing Arts Magazine.
Nurse says nitrous kills
THRESHING IT OUT
letters to the editor
To the editor:
A friend of mine was inhaling nitrous oxide,
commonly known as laughing gas. He thought
it would be fun and would not hurt anything.
He's "dead" wrong. He and his girl friend died
this summer accidentally. My niece stated the
students at her college inhale nitrous oxide fre-
quendy. She did not know it was dangerous
because it is easy to buy.
Nitrous oxide is no laughing matter; you
could die laughing.
Pat Armor Goodlett
RN,BSN
MCI warns violators
To the editor:
Last spring, MCI Telecommunications offi-
cials in the Southwest had the unpleasant task of
interviewing students at various colleges and
universities for their possible participation in
the illegal use of MCI's network to place long
distance telephone calls.
Across the nation, carriers lost an estimated
S500 million in 1986 from telephone fraud and
abuse.
Students need to be made aware that this is a
serious problem-one that could lead to a fine
and/or a jail sentence.
Dana Cox
MCI Investigations Supervisor
BY GARRY TRUDEAU
IOPPOSED THB VOTING RIGHTS BILL,
GUTTED AFFIRMATIVE ACTION, SUP-
PORTS? TAX BREAKS FOR 5E6RE6AIED
COLLEGES, ALL BUT DISMANTLE?
THE CIVIL RIGHTS COMMISSION...
a
WHriTHCtt
ePo (Q oPoiQsjs
AJPS°,F ^ataway
SCANPAL! FROM YOU. ^
n-\ fe/ ^
Jgr
wmnnniLiiEBmsirmnn
?T go UUOO OOQO orjTp
m
BUT FOR A REAL PIECE OF
WORK, LET'S GO TO ARIZONA!
GOVERNOR, SAY A
FEWWORPSTO...
/ MY!WHAT A CUTE
LITTLE PICKANINNYI
\
I'MROLANPHEDLEY. HERB AT A
PHOENIX SHOPPING CENTER, THB
MOVEMENT W RECALL ARIZONA 60V-
J ERNOR EVANMECHAM IS PICKING
C. UP STEAM f
WHY* WELL, TTALL STARTEDimHIS
RESCISSION OFTHE STATE'S MARTIN
U/THER KING HOLIDAY. EVER SINCE,
CRITICS SAY, MECHAMS RECORD HAS
BEEN POCKMARKED Br/NSENSmV/TY.
GOVERNOR, SURELY YOU
KNOW THE HARD QUES-
TION EVEN BEFORE I
ASK IT. tUfTH NEARLY
*23 MILLION IN CAN-
CELLED CONVENTION
BUSINESS, HAVEN'T
YOU CAUSED ARIZONA
GREAT HARM BY RE-
SCINDING THE KING
HOLIDAY?
NOT AT ALL. THAT LOSS
WILL BE OFFSET BY
GROUPS WHO MAY HAVE
CONVENTIONS HERE BE-
CAUSE THEYAPMIRB
MY STAND! /
THEGOVERNOR, ITS LUDICROUS!I'M
UNDERSTAND- A MORMON! TOLER-
ABLY, BE6ST0 ANCE IS A BASIC
DIFFER... TENET OF MY FAITH!
l> IMMHIIIMMMM lllllli
SO THE CHARGES
AGAINST SPREAD BY
yo y QUEERS AND
PICKANINNIES!
f=
UN... I
HESITATE
TO ASK-
WELL, I CANT
REVEALTHE DETAILS,
BUT WE'RE VERY
CLOSE TO SIGNING
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Raphael, Michael J. The Rice Thresher (Houston, Tex.), Vol. 75, No. 5, Ed. 1 Friday, September 18, 1987, newspaper, September 18, 1987; Houston, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth245671/m1/3/: accessed July 18, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu.; crediting Rice University Woodson Research Center.