VOLUME 106, ISSUE NO. 6 | STUDENT-RUN SINCE 1916 | RICETHRESHER.ORG | WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 29, 2021
Electrical fire in Mudd Lab leads to campus phone and network outages BONNIE ZHAO
ASST NEWS EDITOR
KATHERINE HUI / THRESHER ILLUSTRATED BY ROBERT HEETER Coffeehouse began to accept cash only on Monday due to network outages across campus.
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Rice campus experienced phone and network outages due to an electrical problem in the Mudd Computer Science Laboratory building, according to B. Paul Padley, interim vice president for IT and chief information officer. At 11:04 a.m. on Sept. 27, an electrical fire was reported and the Houston Fire Department arrived on site, according to the Office of Information Technology Status Page. Padley said that the problem was with a rectifier that supplies direct current power to some of the devices in the facility that provide services to the campus. The outages were announced to be resolved on Monday night at 8:40 p.m. “I just want to thank everybody on campus for their patience,” Padley said. “And I especially want to thank everyone in the Office of Information Technology for their hard work at quickly and efficiently
restoring service. They did exemplary work in a hectic situation.” Padley said that OIT is going to conduct a thorough review studying exactly what happened in order to understand the best ways to prevent it from happening again in the future. The Rice University Police Department phone also experienced a temporary outage during the day, and students were advised to dial 911 instead for serious, life-threatening emergencies, according to a Rice alert email. Clemente Rodriguez, chief of police, said that RUPD has rarely experienced a complete phone outage in the past. “But during those rare occasions when we have had an outage, we learned how important it is to have a backup system,” Rodriguez said. According to Rodriguez, RUPD was able to manage the system during this outage by switching to their analog phone system, but the one drawback is the backup system is not able to handle multiple calls at one time.
“For this reason we asked for all emergency calls to be routed through 911 to ensure there would be no delay in responding to campus emergencies,” Rodriguez said. “We are not aware of any missed calls during the outage yesterday.” Miguel Luna, the general manager of Rice Coffeehouse, said that the studentrun business could only accept cash as payment due to the outage. “[It’s because] Tetra and our [point of sales] system rely on wifi,” Luna said. “[We had] fewer customers since we announced that we’re doing cash only, and not many people have cash with them.” Christopher Jermaine, a computer science professor, said that the outage affected his ability to record his COMP 330 class. “I [record classes] for students who are ill, quarantined,” Jermaine said. “But honestly, it wasn’t a huge deal. I think we missed about 15 minutes of class time.”
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‘Some call it Hell; I call it “Flue”’: A look back at the 1918 pandemic MORGAN GAGE
effective way in which the situation was handled,” E. Finley Carter (class of 1922) wrote. “With the onset of the epidemic one of In the history of the Rice Thresher, the the dormitories was converted to a hospital publication of print editions has been staffed with army doctors and nurses who suspended three times: last February in the cared for the many patients who were victims midst of a historic winter storm, in spring of influenza.” Though Carter references a student dying 2020 during the onset of the COVID-19 early on, before the pandemic in the threat the influenza United States and in played was evident, 1918 during World he wrote that, as War I — and the As the Spanish flu was tearing he recalled, there coinciding Spanish through Houston, we were in were no student influenza pandemic. fatalities regardless The last edition of the middle of a world war and of the many deaths the Thresher in 1918 that had to take precedence at “A&M and other was published May institutions.” 25. Thresher staff over everything else, and we Despite the lack wrote about the didn’t shut down. of fatalities, Carter establishment of the wrote that he himself Student Association Melissa Kean had a difficult time and the poor quality RICE HISTORIAN breathing to climb of food during wartime and published advertisements, the stairs of Lovett Hall after he recovered aimed at the student body of a militarized from the worst of the influenza. In an interview with the Rice Historical campus, for military uniforms for sale. By the time the Spanish influenza ravaged Review, Kean discussed some of the potential Houston in the fall, killing 2,100 Houstonians reasons why firsthand accounts from the by the end of October, the Thresher was not Rice student body are lacking. “In the firsthand account, we see that printing; as a result, firsthand accounts of all the doctors and the nurses in the field the student experience are scarce. A 2018 blog post written by former Rice hospital at Rice were military nurses and historian and graduate student Melissa doctors because the entire campus was Kean explored what was the only firsthand under military regulation as there was a war student account of the influenza pandemic going on,” Kean said. “As the Spanish flu that she had found, written 57 years later in was tearing through Houston, we were in the middle of a world war and that had to take 1975. “Credit should be given to the Institute’s precedence over everything else, and we staff and to the Army Medical Corps for the didn’t shut down.” A&E EDITOR
Kean also said that the pause on student publications, as well as the student body’s lower standards for personal safety, may have contributed to the lack of primary accounts. Interspersed between advertisements for war savings stamps, military recruitment efforts and updates on the war, the Oct. 24, 1918 edition of the Houston Chronicle covered several aspects of the developing influenza pandemic. Rice University, known as the Rice Institute at the time, planned to play a practice football game that Saturday. The Chronicle wrote, “Influenza at Rice Institute has thrown the football squad for a loss, but the worst is over,” even as they reported that newspaper ads were being used to raise awareness for the public health crisis. This same issue announced that the United States’ public health service sent
doctors to Houston influenza or pneumonia patients who were unable to reach their own physicians. Drug stores advertised miracle cures for the Spanish influenza and its aftereffects. The Houston Chronicle’s editorial called for the Houston community to respect the order banning public gatherings — an order that only lasted a few weeks. However, while formal accounts from Rice students of the influenza pandemic in 1918 are non-existent, the threat of the disease did not evaporate at the start of the following year. The Spanish influenza was still considered a threat into 1920, although deaths had slowed throughout 1919. In the Thresher, references to the influenza that was unusually deadly in young adults similarly continued.
SEE 1918 PANDEMIC PAGE 7
Thresher clippings about the influenza epidemic of 1918.
THRESHER ARCHIVES 1919-1920