VOLUME 104, ISSUE NO. 3 | STUDENT-RUN SINCE 1916 | RICETHRESHER.ORG | WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 11, 2019
Channing Wang / THRESHER
Faculty, students reflect on Texas shootings RYND MORGAN ASST NEWS EDITOR
Exactly one month after the mass shootings in El Paso and Dayton, Ohio, and three days after the shooting in the Midland-Odessa community in West Texas, members of the Rice community met in the Grand Hall of the Rice Memorial Center for a panel discussion and vigil in an event called “Reflections on El Paso: A Time for Unity.” During the panel discussion, Emani Brown, a student from El Paso, said that she could remember the exact moment when she first heard that there was an active shooter, while she was at her internship in Connecticut. “I remember feeling so much fear, I called my mom immediately. My mom’s cousin was inside that Walmart an hour before the shooting. My aunt and her grandson were on lockdown at the dentist’s office,” Brown, a Jones College junior, said. Jenifer Bratter, associate professor of sociology, said that one of the most
humbling aspects of the shooting in Indigenous scholars to discuss the El Paso was that it, like many recent issues, the symptoms, the causes and the shootings, took place in a space typically effects of the logic of white supremacy. deemed safe. She “Being with this also said that she community in this felt a connection to particular moment the victims. is what stopped “When this When this shooting me from breaking shooting occurred, down right then occurred, I pored over I pored over the and there,” biographies of the biographies of the Martinez said. the victims and I victims and I saw people Brown said that saw people that I that I knew even though the shooting in El knew even though Paso affected her I didn’t know them. I didn’t know differently than them,” Bratter said. Jenifer Bratter other shootings “We need to see because it ourselves in every ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR OF SOCIOLOGY happened in her victim.” hometown. Sophia Martinez, a graduate student “I guess I didn’t realize what it would in the English department from El Paso, be like when it hit so close to home,” said that when she found out about Brown said. “And I can tell you that it’s the shooting, she was participating in been mentally draining, every single a workshop hosted by Jose Aranda, day. The energy that it has sucked out of an associate professor of Chicanx and me has been incredible, and I’m trying American literature, working with a to heal.” community of Chicanx, Latinx and Professor Luis Duno-Gottberg of the
Owls’ moonshot: Beat UT JOSHUA ANIL THRESHER STAFF
In 1962, during his famous “We choose to go to the moon” speech at Rice Stadium, President John F. Kennedy posed a question to the audience. “Why does Rice play Texas?” Kennedy said. At the time, Rice football had beaten the University of Texas, Austin on five occasions in the previous 10 years. But when the Owls gear up to face UT on Saturday night at NRG Stadium, they will be attempting to dramatically reverse the two teams’ recent competitive history. The last time Rice football beat Texas, most of the Rice undergraduate
population was not yet alive. In 1994, the Owls pulled out a 19-17 win, their first against UT since 1965. Since that 1994 game, the Owls and Longhorns have faced off 13 times, with the Longhorns winning all 13 contests. But this losing trend is not a recent phenomenon. Rice and UT have been playing each other for over a century, with the first game coming in 1914 — a 41-0 shutout victory for the Longhorns. Since then, the two teams have played 94 times, with Texas leading the series 72-21-1. The two teams will match up again Saturday, as Rice tries to avoid starting its season 0-3 after having already lost to Army West Point and Wake Forest University. SEE UT
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Spanish, Portuguese and Latin American studies department said that Rice, as a university environment, could play a role in activism and prevention. “Universities are places that are devoted to the production of knowledge and to research,” Duno-Gottberg said. “I think we have to teach more, we have to research more and we have to think also about our teaching and research mission beyond the classroom and branch out into the public sphere.” Bratter also said that the university environment nurtures critical thought, but often remains in the abstract. “We are very fortunate to be in one of the most diverse cities in the country,” Bratter said. “I think one of the ways we get to know each other is to get to know more than each other, which is to branch out into the community that is literally across the street, and down the block, and on the light rail, and in the north side, and in Fifth Ward, and in Third Ward and all over — because those are our people too.” SEE EL PASO PAGE 2
Black at Rice: Drew Carter IVANKA PEREZ FEATURES EDITOR
Until Senior Night for his high school’s varsity soccer team, Drew Carter didn’t know whether he was going to college. He’d just been given a yellow card from the referee and was sent to the sidelines, furious, when he checked his phone. His screen displayed an email from Questbridge with the message: “Congratulations! You’re a national college match finalist.” When Carter saw the message, he burst into tears. He was surrounded by his loved ones, his grandparents were there with him, his team was cheering for him and he’d called his mom before the game even finished.
“To share that moment with them meant a lot to me,” Carter, a Jones College sophomore, said. Carter credits his family for shaping him into the person he is today. “So many of the profound lessons I’ve learned, some of the things we call each other intellectuals for, are things my mother was already passing on to me,” Carter said. Carter’s grandparents also had a profound impact on his life. When he was a kid, Carter used to tag along on his grandfather’s jobs installing carpet in some of the most important buildings in Washington D.C. — the Capitol, the Pentagon and the White House. When he wasn’t accompanying SEE BLACK
AT RICE PAGE 6