The Rice Thresher (Houston, Tex.), Vol. 85, No. 5, Ed. 1 Friday, September 26, 1997 Page: 2 of 24
twenty four pages : ill. ; page 19 x 15 in.View a full description of this newspaper.
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Stuck'ms should set their own standards
-Letter Policy
TO SUBMIT — Letters may be sent in by ...
e-mail: th resh e r@ rice, edu
campus mail: Letter to the Editor, c/o The Rice Thresher
U.S. Mail. Letter to the Editor, The Rice Thresher,
6100 Main St., MS-524, 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.
college, year of
RULES-
1. All letters must include your name,
graduation and phone number.
2. Short letters (200-500 words is a good guideline) have a better
chance of being published than long ones. 9
3. letters received via fcampus or U.S. mail must be signed. If you
are not submitting via e-mail, we strongly recommend that yod
' submit letters on a Macintosh or IBM-formatted disk.
4. We do not accept anonymous letters, but names may be with-
held by request in special circumstances.
5. We reserve the right to edit for length, spelling, grammar
and style.
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Rice and the University of Texas are conference rivals no longer, but
tomorrow's contest is just as important as the Rice-Texas battles of the past.
Rice played Texas every year from 1914 until 1945, an era that saw both
determined struggle for Southwest Conference supremacy and, more
recently, one-sided contests Texas thought it would win simply by showing
UP- • .
l~hat all ended in 1994, when Rice handed the complacent Longhorns
their come-uppance in a 19-17 upset victory on national television that
stunned the country.
Now, the hour has finally come for the Longhorns' return to Rice
Stadium, and their timing could not be better. Rice comes straight from
beating defending Big-10 champions Northwestern University last week-
end in a game that proved the Owls have what it takes to stand up to the best
teams in college football. The Owl ground attack juggernaut continued to
steamroll through opposing defensive lines, racking up over 400 yards in
each of its last two games. A win over two-time defending Big-12 champion
Texas on Saturday will not come easily — the longhorns return to Rice with
two week's rest, after a humiliating 66-3 defeat at thj hands of UCLA
obliterated any hope they had of being a national contender.
A win for Rice will show 1994 was not a fluke. After a 28-year string of
defeats, a win will mean two straight victories over Texas at Rice Stadium.
It will show the nation that Rice is a team to be reckoned with outside of the
Western Athletic Conference. It will prove to Houston what no "sell-out"
promotion could, that the Owls are a team worth rooting for.
Most important of all, though, is that a win over Texas is a win over
Texas, plain and simple.
We know that the men of the football team will be fighting it out on the
gridiron for us tomorrow, as doggedly determined as ever, just as they do
every Saturday. But we, the students of this university, owe it to them to give
them every shred of support we can until the game against Texas is won
tomorrow afternoon.
Even at Rice Stadium, the climate can be inhospitable when it comes to
playing Texas. So tomorrow, we should all remember this: every yard
counts, and every student counts.
The Thresher has been accused recently of trying to "stir up trouble."
While we may be guilty of that, others seem to have confused our stand for
free thought and free expression as meaning that we pledge unconditional
support to all expressions of bad taste without intended redeeming value,
or, simply put, that we are against decency.
We believe our own record speaks for itself. A survey of the last eight
issues of the Thresher should give a fairly clear idea of what our standards
of decency are, good or bad. We think that we have upheld a pretty good
standard. But perhaps that is not clear. The legacy of the past excesses of
Thresher backpages may well weigh heavier on o±ir reputation than we may
think fair. Perhaps a stricter statement of our standards of content is what
the students demand.
The Thresher, /hough, is only a small part of this university. What
upperclassman does not remember being shocked as a freshman, at
reading the college minutes or the Thresher backpage for the first time?
Standards for civil conduct rand taste here are lower than those at other
universities. Atid the main reason for that is not widespread administration
censorship on other college campuses, but student self-restraint.
Perhaps the time has come for students at Rice to consider exactly what
we find appropriate and what we find offensive — in our college rooms, on
our floors, in our commons and in our classrooms. Private, personal spaces
should guarantee greater personal "comfort and security. Public areas
should emulate the real world beydtid the hedges as best they can, to foster
freedom of thought and expression. We should be accountable, both to the
law and. most importantly, to the opinions of our peers for what we say, do
and write, let those guilty of grave discourtesy be ostracized by the court
of public opinion, not dealt with by an administrative disciplinary system
inconsistent with the principles of American law.
mi GET
CNW.1T-
fa*
fjjt3 Letters to the Editor
'Thresher,' Trasher' ignore golden rale
To the editor:
I didn't want to begin this letter
with a disclaimer, but in the interest
of presenting an evenhanded argu-
ment (and of minimizing the hate
mail I might receive for my opinion)
1*11 make an exception this time.
DISCLAIMER: I AM NOT in favor
of censoring anything the Thresher
prints. I am in complete agreement
with the Thresher staffs objection to
the prospect of being required to
jump through hoops set up by the
administration or by a media advi-
sor; the thought of having to do so
would be demeaning to anyone.
That said, the part of the Sept. 12
Thresher with which I want to take
issue is its minimization Of the em-
barrassment Allison Fine must have
experienced as a result of the de-
rogatory piece published about her
in the 'Trasher" last spring.
We need only place
ourselves in Fine's
shoes in order to
understand her
actions.
The analogy drawn between
Fine's reaction to undeserved pub-
lic humiliation and the case of one
roommate calling the other a "dead-
beat" for being messy is a compari-
son which' is! farfetched, manipula-
tive and about as appropriate as com-
paring rotten apples with wax or-
anges (the only thing they have in
common is that they both leave a
bad taste in your mouth}. When a
person calls his/her roommate a
name, the solution is for them to
work it out between themselves.
When a person is ridiculed and sub-
jected to cruel sexual jokes in a pa-
per which is read by thousands of
people, the damage done is much
greater.
Although the Thresher is not to
blame for the Fine incident, its staff
can hardly claim to be innocent of
ever doing the same thing to other
individuals or groups of people.
SEE GOLDEN PAGE 3
Blank issue challenges students to think
o
To the editor:
I am writing primarily in response
to Nate Blair's letter that appeared
"in last week's issue, but also in an-
swer to many anti-Thresher senti-
ments enjoying popularity around
campus. Blair questioned whether
the Thresher is meeting the expecta-
tions of the student body. Rice stu-
dents seem to have a lot of expecta-
tions; some are more realistic than
others. For example, a common one
is that hard work means better
grades, and better grades mean a
better job and higher pay. After all,
that's why we're here (right?).
An even more popular expecta-
tion is that since Rice is such an
excellent institution run by such
competent professionals,'as long as
we pay tuition and keep our noses
buried in the books, the ball will
keep on rolling, and we'll be off to
bright futures and green pastures in
no time. Besides, with all these
deadlines and interviews, who has
time to worry about a campus cli-
mate promoting free expression?
Why don't we rephrase Blair's
question and asR if the Thresher is,
meeting the student body's needs?
Blair pointed out that ''the student
body is not up in arms about [the
issue of free expression)." About
what issue are we? I'm afraid that's
a rhetorical question. Here's an-
other one: If the editors of the
newspaper don't help us decide
SEE BLANK, PAGE 3
Unbalanced coverage hurts Rice community
To the editor:
It is unfortunate that the recent
coverage on the situation involving
Allison Fine has been unfair both to
Fine and to all students who feel
obligated to speak out in their own
defense.
The one-sided information that
has been published does not inform
the community of the many maq|hs
that Fine spent working one-on-one
with members of the Thresher to
address her Concerns regarding
what she perceived to be the paper's
ongoing sexist editorial content. In
response to her efforts, the outgo-
ing editors printed what Fine took to
be a vindictive and harassing attack
of her in the "Trasher."
This year's Thresher coyerage
does not give Fine much-deserved
credit for exhausting every possible
means—including organizing meet-
ings and writing public letters — to
address her concerns directly with
those involved without invoking the
student judicial process.
Fine dedicated a
tremendous amount
of energy to further
the campus dialogue
on sexual
harassment.
Fine dealt openly and respect-
fully with the Thresher and its staff in
all of her efforts, and it is sad that the
Tkrnher has failed to reciprocate
this professionalism by providing
nothing more than a one-sided view
of last year's events.
Regardless of the outcome of the
current situation, your coverage has
produced a chilling environment of
its own. Namely, an environment in
which Rice students feel that they
may be publicly attacked for having
the courage to disagree with the
Thresher. Fine dedicated a tremen-
dous amount of energy to further
the campus dialogue on sexual ha-
rassment by focusing on the issues.
In return she has been subject to a
hurtful personal attack that seems
to have forgotten her original valid
concerns with the Thresher. Fine is a
strong individual who will move be-
yond this treatment. When a Rice
student chooses to remain silent in
the futurfc because of your unbal-
anced presentation of this issue, then
the Thresher's, disservice to the com
munity will be hilly realized.
Maryana Iskander
Wiess '97
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Hardi, Joel & Siy, Angelique. The Rice Thresher (Houston, Tex.), Vol. 85, No. 5, Ed. 1 Friday, September 26, 1997, newspaper, September 26, 1997; Houston, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth246601/m1/2/: accessed July 17, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu.; crediting Rice University Woodson Research Center.