VOLUME 105, ISSUE NO. 14 | STUDENT-RUN SINCE 1916 | RICETHRESHER.ORG | WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 27, 2021
ILLUSTRATION BY YIFEI ZHANG
Crisis Management plans vaccine rollout for Rice community MORIKE AYODEJI AND HAJERA NAVEED THRESHER STAFF AND SENIOR WRITER
As administration of the COVID-19 vaccine begins worldwide, Rice is working with the state of Texas to be designated as a vaccine site, according to Vice President of Administration Kevin Kirby, who chairs the Crisis Management Advisory Committee. “Our goal is to be able to vaccinate everybody in our community who wants a vaccine. We’re preparing to do up to 10,000 people on the Rice campus, so faculty, students and staff,” Kirby said. According to Jerusha Kasch, director of Institutional Crisis Management, Rice is waiting for the state to give them their requested allocation. However, Crisis Management has been preparing for the vaccine roll out for the past six
months, starting in mid-August with discussions of preparing a team, more time than they had for planning COVID testing. “We have a vaccine plan. We have a mass vaccination plan; we have a small vaccination plan. We have petitioned the state to receive vaccines. We have started to develop a hiring process for vaccine delivering companies,” Kasch said. According to Kasch, one of these preparations is proving to the state that they are capable of storing the vaccines. “We had to prepare and get refrigeration systems based upon the types of vaccine. Some vaccines have to be stored at negative 80 degrees [Celsius] and some at negative 20, so we had to prepare for both. We do have all the equipment necessary,” Kasch said. The timing of vaccination administration on
campus depends entirely on the guidelines set out by Texas, according to Kasch. “If we get it before the priority groups have been satisfied, we have to follow those priorities as well. Right now [in Texas], we’re in 1A and 1B. Somewhere in the next group is higher education or groups that live together in dense populations like universities and colleges. If we get it and that’s the group we’re in, we don’t have to prioritize. Everyone can sign up at the same time,” Kasch said. Crisis Management is unsure if they will receive the full vaccine supply ordered all at once or in a tiered way, according to Kirby. “There’s only so much we can do. We don’t know what we’re getting, and we don’t know when we’re getting it. It’s just kind of a sit-andwait situation,” Kasch said. Kasch explained that accessing the vaccine SEE VACCINATION PAGE 2
Douglas Brinkley talks using history to navigate the Trump era KATELYN LANDRY A&E EDITOR
While the world watched the windows of the U.S. Capitol being smashed and offices of U.S. Congresspeople being vandalized with violent and unwavering conviction in the historic Jan. 6 riot, one of Rice’s own was on call with journalists and TV anchors for hours. His steady yet energized voice is among many in today’s intense news cycle, his commentary offering a contextualization of our current moment as if it is already memorialized. As the headlines seem to get more bizarre and morbid with each passing day, Rice history professor Douglas Brinkley deals in the art of perspective.
When he’s not giving lectures, grading papers or adding to his acclaimed bibliography of over three dozen books, Brinkley can be spotted on major news networks providing insight on the political news of the day. As an official U.S. presidential historian for CNN, contributing editor for Vanity Fair and a frequently cited source in publications like the New York Times and Wall Street Journal, Brinkley has been a heavily-relied upon history source for journalists as they scrambled to keep up with the unpredictable antics of former President Donald Trump’s administration. “History teaches us that our own times are not uniquely perilous,” Brinkley told the Thresher. “The headlines of the day are real,
but we’ve seen worse. You gotta put it in perspective and not get breathless, because otherwise every hour you think it’s the biggest thing that ever happened.” Brinkley says history is a trade — in the same way one might see an electrician to repair wiring, he says members of the media and government authorities constantly reach out to him seeking historical information that might illuminate what’s going on today. With just minutes on the air to react to something as shocking as the Jan. 6 U.S. Capitol riot, Brinkley can provide a thoughtful historical perspective on our current moment. “It is a day that will live in infamy, as Franklin Roosevelt said at the time of Pearl Harbor, but it’s going to be about what
happens in a democratic society when you have a totalitarian as president,” Brinkley said alongside CNN Anchor Wolf Blitzer as they discussed one of Trump’s tweets following the riot. “[Trump] will pay a very high cost in history.” In the span of Trump’s term — which was riddled with controversy, scandals and most recently his “incitement of insurgence” and historic double impeachment — Brinkley says found himself in a whirlwind of uncertainty and polarization unlike years before. “I’m very bullish on the United States, [and] I think we’re an amazing country, but the rise of Donald Trump [caused] me great consternation because he has a deeply SEE DOUGLAS
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