The Rice Thresher (Houston, Tex.), Vol. 84, No. 16, Ed. 1 Friday, January 31, 1997 Page: 2 of 16
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Funds for a new Beer-Bike track
would be money well spent.
Letters to the Editor
It's been 40 years in the making ...
It's the ultimate expression of the college spirit and all of its
pageantry. It's a war of alacrity, skill and audacity. Over the years, it
has involved various degrees of danger, hut rule changes have been
made to protect the warriors from unnecessary pain.
What, you might ask, are we Aalking about? -
Beer-Bike '97.
This year, the Beer-fiike celebration will be bigger and better than
ever before as the coordinators Celebrate the 40ttT anniversary of the
race. Thanks to a lot of students donating their time and energy in the
name of their colleges and university, the race has become a major
university event. With the beer taps from St. Arnold's Brewery pump-
ing out a lot of Amber Ale and the hundreds of alumni in attendance,
ii will have the makings of the ultimate party, except for one thing
safety.
No, we're not talking about the need for less alcohol and more
campus police. What we are talking about is the track. Over the years,
the track has taken a beating. The university administration has
understandably rented out the parking lot behind the stadium to
various functions in an effort to make some money and build a rapport
with the community. In addition, the administration has generously
repaired the track after these events to bring it up to a reasonable
safety standard, but the repairs no longer quite cut it.
The administration must take the next step by appropriating the
money to replace the old track with newer and more durable materials.
It is, admittedly, a large financial commitment, but the money will be
well spent in the interests o! students. After all, in the modern Rice
building boom, this expense is a drop in the bucket. "
As the voice of the student body, we at the Thresher applaud the
university's actions to this point while also urging the administration
to lake the next step.
Please keep Beer-Bike safe for another 40 years of traditional Rice
festivities. Build a new track.
PoLrncos.coM
Bureaucratic rules on election
homepages serve no logical purpose.
1 -list year was probably the first time that World Wide Web pages
were used in election campaigning at Rice, and it was interesting to see
how candidates found ways to use the medium fo their advantage.
Alas, we will see no such experiments this year. The Student
Association has decided to crack down on WWW campaigning, limit-
ing the size and content of pages severely (2,000 words, two medium
si/cd images and no links). Ilie rules will surely limit candidates'
abilities to present themselves to the student body — and for what?
There is some possible unfairness in WWW page use: Some
"students have bigger accounts than others, for example. But such
problems could have been addressed by a simple size limit (one
megabyte, for example) which is-small enough for everyone's account
yet big enough to. hold a lot of
information, photos and graph-
ics. Such a limitation, which
was suggested by several SA
members, would be easy to
enforce and considerably less
restrictive.
It makes no sense to im-
pose unnecessary regulations. We urge the SA to reconsider its
overwrought and pojntless rules and adopt looser ones. Besides-, if we
judge from last year's experience, an elaborate homepage is not going
to make the difference between winning and losing an election: 'line
candidates with "flashy pages all lost last year.
To the editor;
A common example of racism in
action: Late at night, an innocent
black person is running down the
street. A suspicious police officer
pulls him over, detains him for how-
ever long it takes to ascertain that
he's not a threat and then leaves
without apology or remorse for the
incident. Or people deny that rac-
ism even exists anymore, that it
ended with the civil rights move-
ment. So whenever a black person
complains of racism, that black per-
son must be "overreacting."
Another example is the confused
presumption that so long as a per-
son has no overt hostility, the best of
intentions and is not dressed in white
sheets brandishing a torch and a
cross, that person must not be har-
boring any racist predispositions.
In the case of Apollo Amoko
("Campus practices closet racism,"
Jan. 24), all three of the above ex-
amples rolled into one as he was
detained by police on several occa-
sions, under suspicion of being a
threat to the Rice community.
Amoko is owed an
unmitigated public
apology. That it has
not been forthcoming
is evidence of racism
itself.
Of course, anyone who knows
Amoko would have to question the
efficacy of the officers who stopped
him. A well-groomed, textbook-tot-
ing Kenyan with a sunny disposition
and large vocabulary walking in
broad daylight doesn't particularly
resemble the robbers described in
all those "Crime Alert" posters.
Amoko is owed an unmitigated
public apology. That it has not been
forthcoming is evidence of racism
itself. The fact that the police depart-
ment has taken a defensive posture
is evidence of racism 3s well.
That the police department has
been condescending, telling Amoko
his detention was for his own good
and in the name of protecting the
community (which community?),
tacitly tells Amoko, "We're sorry,
we didn't know you're one of the
good ones, we thought you weren't."
It was for Amoko's own good that he
was presumed guilty — not of any
crime reported, justguilty?That his
civil rights were violated?
That Amoko has been told by. a
number of people that he is "overre-
acting" is evidence of racism as well.
What is really meant by this is that
black people complain too much. If
SEE RACISM. P*GE 4
Hwang, Lewis propagate distortion
To the editor: And, iinlikemvang, I intend to actu- voting against Gingrich, to save fat
piniong
To the editor:
I am writing to expose the lies
and hypocrisy being spread by Willy
Hwang and Allen Ix-wis of the.Rice
Republicans (although I suppose he
has an excuse).
-I'd like to comment on Willy
Hwang's column from the Jan. 24
edition of the Thresher ("GOPs eth-
ics violations inflated by Demo-
crats.") It seemed, to my (unskilled)
eyes, merely a Vehashing of Lewis'
column from the previous issue.
Trust me, try it. Put the twocolumns
together and count the similarities.
It's amazing.
Hwang seemed to take as fact
several statements in Lewis' column
which are exceedingly flawed. And
so, let me make some clarifications.
And, unliketfwang, I intend to actu-
ally cite sources for this informa-
tion. No, Rush Limbaugh is not a
reliable source.
First, Hwang mentioned that
since all the ethics charges the
Democrats have raised were thrown
out, Gingrich is not guilty. Mean-
whifei Democrats returned legiti-
mate donations from Asian contribu-
tors, which proves that they Sre bad.
The reasoning here is clearly flawed,
further demonstrated by the Repub-
licans having raised significantly
more contribution money than the
Democrats.
He indicates that the Democrats
succeeded in conning several Re-
publican colleagues (including the
highly-esteemed Jim Leach) into
voting against Gingrich, to save face
for 1998. It's sad that he doesn't for
a second consider that maybe they
were doing what Was right, in fact,
even the most basic understanding
of the political structure would indi-
cate that to vote against his party's
no'minee for speaker of the House is
an act of political suicide, not sur-
vival, and hurts the chances of party
support in 1998.
Later, Hwang indicates that
Gingrich made an "honest mistake."
He signed a paper with a statement
which he knew — or should have
known — to have been false. If you
do this at Rice, it's called an Honor
Code violation. In other parts of the
country", its called fraud or perjury.
SEE OINORICH, PAGE.4
Baseball team needs more fan support
Letter Policy
TO SUBMIT — letters may be sent in by ...
e-mail: wel!er<p)rice. edu
campus mail: Letter to the Editor, c/o The Rice Thresher
U.S. Mail: Letter to the Editor, The Rice TkresJter, t
61(H) Main St.. MS524, Houston, TX 77005-1892
in person: Thresher Office, Second Floor, Student Center
DEADLINE - Deadline for all letters is 5 p.m. on Monday, letters
received after the deadline are generally not considered for
publication until the following week.
RULES —
1. All letters must include your name, college, year of
graduation and phone number.
2 We reserve the right to edit "for length, spelling, grammar
and style.
To the editor:
If you were to ask most casual
baseball fans around the country to
name the eight teams who have
made it to the NCAA regional finals
(the equivalent of basketball's Sweet
Sixteen) the past two years, chances
are that Rice's name wouldn't come
up even though we're one of the
eight.
Why? Because, let's face it. in the
recent past Rice athletics haven't
had the winning reputation and tra-
dition of the University ofTexas, the
University of Florida or Texas A& M
University. I feel that these was a
pretty good reason for the seem-
ingly unfair view of us as a second-
rate athletic power: We weren't very
good.
In fact, at times during the '80s,
we were what some people might
call bad. What others might call re-
ally bad. And what still others might
call crappy. Even though we don't
like Uiose people, they had a point.
But these days, things have changed
dramatically.
Though Rice merchandise is still
more scarce outside the hedges than,
a Super Bowl without a Pepsi com-
mercial, our athletic teams haye
taken huge strides in taking the pro-
gram to the next level.
The track teams are among the
conference leaders every year, the
women's basketball team is but two
overtime losses away from leading
the conference this year, and iflhey
didn't resemble a M AS H. unit ev-
ery year, the men's basketball team
could be right at the top as well.
And our football team, which just
six years ago lost a scrimmage 34-17
to a local junior high team (who, in
our team's defense, were very big
for their age) managed toTmish the
season a successful 7-4 and to thrash
a ranked team in the process. A few
nail-biters against the likes of
Brigham Young University and Ohio
State University is all that stood be-
tween them and a shot at Florida
State University in the Sugar Bowl.
Okay, maybe not, but it was still a
good year.
And then there's the baseball
team, of which I have been a mem-
ber for the past three year$. We had
planned for, years to wait until the
last year of the SWC to win the con-
ference championship list year and
leave the South west Conference with
Rice, not Texas or Texas A&M. on
top. We succeeded.
SEE BASttAll, PAGE 4
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Beard, Marty & Rao, Vivek. The Rice Thresher (Houston, Tex.), Vol. 84, No. 16, Ed. 1 Friday, January 31, 1997, newspaper, January 31, 1997; Houston, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth246558/m1/2/: accessed June 20, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu.; crediting Rice University Woodson Research Center.