The Rice Thresher, Vol. 90, No. 28, Ed. 1 Friday, April 25, 2003 Page: 2 of 20
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THE RICE THRESHER OPINION FRIDAY, APRIL 25,2003
the Rice Thresher
New president needs fun,
student-oriented focus
The time has come for us to make our wish list for what we want
in the next Rice president. We're trying to be realistic here; we know
we are never again going to find a person who looks exactly like
Boris Yeltsin.
That said, we would like the Presidential Search Committee to
seek certain traits in the candidates — traits that will allow the next
president to continue what Malcolm Gillis did well and to improve in
areas where Gillis could have been better.
First, the new president should be the type of person who will
willingly and enthusiastically participate in Rice culture. He or she
should also continue the initiatives that have gone well for Gillis. ilie
president should:
■ Be committed to being seen on campus as often as possible,
especially if lie or she is going to live across the street from campus.
Eating meals at the colleges and watching student activities every
now and then, as Gillis is prone to do, are great steps.
■ Continue Gillis's laudable willingness to participate in Rice's
zany traditions. Gillis has helped make the Rice experience more
entertaining with events such as the Gillis-Camacho Study Break, as
well as with his receptiveness to Club 13 and Beer-Bike.
■ Be able to fund-raise effectively so that opportunities at Rice
can increase across the board.
■ Aim to bring in more interesting and prominent commence-
ment speakers.
■ Despite Rice's critical undergraduate focus, improving the
quality of graduate education also needs to be a focus.
Second, the next President needs to do a better job than Gillis of
focusing on the quality of the unique Rice undergraduate experi-
ence — that which makes Rice special. To this end, the president
should:
■ Believe in the value of a small student body, and stand in the
way of anyone who intends to hike enrollment.
■ Realize the attractiveness of Rice's tuition, and seek to
reinstate tuition indexing as soon as possible.
■ Reverse programs and policies formed as a result of Gillis's
obsession with turning Rice into Harvard. As tough as it may be for
a university president to swallow, some Rice students came here in
order not to go to an Ivy League school. Instead of spending time
and money becoming an Ivy knockoff, the new president should
focus on making Rice an even stronger competitor against the
Ivies.
■ The president should be committed to — gasp — commu-
nicating regularly, thoroughly and effectively with students. If noth-
ing else, we are paying customers.
Finally, Rice's next president should have certain qualifications
which will allow him or her to expand and improve upon Gillis's
regime. The president should:
■ Come from a primarily educational realm, like Gillis, not
primarily a business or political realm.
■ Have limited experience at Ivy League universities.
■ Be a Rice graduate, if possible.
If the next president is as fun as Gillis but more focused on the
undergraduate experience (and not the Harvard-imitating experi-
ence) . we are confident Rice will head in an exciting direction in the
coming years.
School should make
safety a higher priority
We know the economy is tight, but safety should always be
everyone's top priority. Rice's administration should be willing to
subsidize departments' costs for purchasing new automated elec-
tronic defibrillators.
Building administrators are considering installing defibrillators
in Alice Pratt Brown Hall and the Jesse H. Jones Graduate School of
Management Building, which is crucial because both are heavily
populated areas of the campus.
However, other buildings — such as the student center — need
♦he equipment too, and at a cost of approximately $3,500 per unit, a
university subsidy will be necessary for these purchases to take
place in a timely manner.
By refusing to subsidize defibrillators and forcing departments to
foot the bill themselves, the university sends the troubling message
that individual departments do not have administrative support
when it comes to campus-wide safety*.
Unsigned editorials represent the majority opinion of the Thresher
editorial staff.
WELCOME TO THE
GILLIS-CAMACHO
STUDY BREAK!
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LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
Racial reparations are
not a positive solution
To the editor:
In response to Falan Mouton's
opinion piece on racial reparations
("Racial reparations would curb
hopelessness," April 18): Institut-
ing a system of racial reparations in
the United States would be the
single most destructive action this
country's leadership could take in
the area of race relations.
The key question here is, who
pays? Surely not me or my family.
As poor Irish-Catholic immigrants
in the 1700s, we were far removed
from slavery.
Surely the descendants of immi-
grants that came to this country any-
time after the Civil War are exempt
too.
Should the children of the ap-
proximately 3,000 slave-owners of
African descent in antebellum
times pay? Should blue-collar
whites and other poor minorities
pay middle- and upper-class
blacks?
How about the descendants of
the 350,000 Union (mostly white)
soldiers who died fighting for
slaves' freedom? The assumption
that all whites owe all blacks is
incredibly racist and should offend
any white person.
It should be clear from these
examples that reparations are fun-
damentally ridiculous. Instead of
dwelling on old wounds, let us be
proactive with regard to race rela-
tions.
Let the black community pres-
sure itself to improve by ridding
itself of negative and immoral in-
fluences such as drug abuse and
the proliferation of gangsta rap.
I^t the white community get in-
volved in learning about black cul-
ture and reaching out to blacks in
more personal ways.
Reparat ions will not lessen anti-
white sentiment among blacks and
they will increase anti-black senti-
ment among whites. Simply throw-
ing money .it a problem will do noth
ing to alleviate it.
In order for any improvements
in race relations to occur, the repa-
rations crowd must drop the falla-
cious claims that blacks are help-
less because of events that occurred
more than 150 years ago. Further-
more, the attitude that blacks are
unable to drop the issue because of
perceived victimization will do noth-
ing but propagate the cultural prob-
lem of racism.
William Hoy
Ij?vett freshman
Forum took improper
focus, slandered faiths
To the editor:
On Tuesday, I attended the Forum
on Gujarat and Its Aftermath. Hie vio-
lence in Gujarat, India last year — the
burning of a train full of Hindus by
Muslims and the subsequent orga-
nized massacre of Muslims by funda-
mentalist Hindus in retaliation—are a
horrific and inexcusable blemish on
India's face, and I applaud the Muslim
Students Association for recognizing
this to be a matter of interest to the
Rice community.
However, I found critical prob-
lems in the way the forum was
handled. I had expected the discus-
sion to focus primarily on the re-
building of Gujarat and the restruc-
turing of India in the aftermath of the
events. Instead I was greeted by
highly specific biases on the part of
the invited speakers, who talked
mainly about controversial issues
surrounding the actual massacres.
Also, the forum was less about
human rights in Gujarat and more
about addressing the political machi-
nations of the Hindutva movement, a
fundamentalist movement that does
not represent the views of the major-
ity of the Hindu population, neither
in India nor across the globe.
California Institute of Integral
Studies Anthropology Professor
Aug,-ma Chatterji and Rider Univer-
sity Associate Professor Biju
Mathew, two academics who have
written and spoken extensively about
the events of 2002 and the
sociopolitical aftermath, neglected to
tackle the more pertinent issues:
What we can learn from the Gujarat
conflict; How we can build a better
secular society in India; and What
the future of the world is in the con-
text of religious rivalry. Perhaps the
sponsors of the forum should have
picked a more diverse slate of speak-
ers who would not have slandered an
entire religion based on the beliefs of
a fundamentalist minority.
Islam and Hindu are religions of
peace, and the lesson we should take
from the Gujarat conflict is that we
must continue to propagate this mes-
sage of peace so that the two reli-
gions can coexist. Fundamentalism
in any religion can be used as a crutch
forthose who wish to attack religious
conservatives, but we should recog-
nize that the actions of militant fun-
damentalists should not be ascribed
to the ideologies of an entire people.
Sriram Eleswarapu
Martel sophomore
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Berenson, Mark. The Rice Thresher, Vol. 90, No. 28, Ed. 1 Friday, April 25, 2003, newspaper, April 25, 2003; Houston, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth398435/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.