The Rice Thresher | Wednesday, March 8, 2023

significant milestone’:

Women carve out spaces at Rice

When the then-Rice Institute welcomed its first matriculating class, Nellie Mills was among its ranks. Mills, the first woman to matriculate at Rice, was one of the few women attending Rice in its early days. While students were largely male, Rice was established as a coeducational institution, admitting both male and female students from its inception — though admission was restricted to white Texas residents.

It was the summer of 1929, three years after the first Rice doctoral degree was granted, when the Houston Chronicle announced that Rice had awarded its first Ph.D. to a woman: May Hickey. Hickey was a remarkable student beyond the degrees she earned. From Rice alone, she earned her bachelor’s degree, a masters in mathematics and physics and, later, her Ph.D. in mathematics.

“This is the best application ever sent out from this school,” Hickey’s high school principal wrote as part of her undergraduate application. “I predict that May Hickey will establish a record at Rice Institute.”

He was right. Hickey had a transcript of almost entirely 1’s — the highest grade offered at the time, in an age before grade inflation when that grade was notoriously difficult to achieve. As an undergraduate student, she was a teaching assistant in the math, English and German departments.

Two years in a row, she was awarded the Graham Baker Award for best student at Rice. She went on to teach undergraduates mathematics and physics while earning her master’s and Ph.D.

Despite their academic success, women still faced a number of social restrictions. According to Edna Otuomagie’s online exhibit exploring the decisions Rice made concerning gender, sex and race between

1957 and 1970, freshmen girls were required to wear formal clothing, such as the pinafore dress, in public spaces. For the first part of Rice’s history, women were not offered on-campus housing and were required to leave campus by 5 p.m. until the establishment of residential colleges in 1957, when Jones College, the first women’s residential college and oncampus housing, was established.

“In 1954, President William Houston convened the Committee on Student Housing ‘to study the student housing problem, decide if a residential college system would be feasible, and if so … plan that system.’” Otuomagie wrote. “On this council of 19 people sat only four women at one time … These women, with the help of trustee J. Newton Rayzor, pushed for oncampus living arrangements for the female students.”

“Top Chef” finalist Evelyn Garcia talks KIN, college and her grandparents’ cheese

MICHELLE GACHELIN A&E

Growing up, Evelyn Garcia was surrounded by two things: family and food. Now, the “Top Chef: Houston” finalist serves her grandparents’ Salvadoran cheese at Jūn, her brand-new restaurant, in hopes of uniting customers through food.

Garcia’s career began at home, long before earning her white coat and professional accolades. As a firstgeneration Latin American, she said that her family worked on many different projects, including running their own cleaning company and later, their own restaurant. Instead of a chore, she said that cooking was always something she loved to do.

After Title IX: Looking back at early women’s sports at Rice

they finally started serving sandwiches for lunch, and we would sneak them out so we could get something for dinner.”

“Just very traditionally, it kind of falls on the oldest one to help more [and] be more responsible,” Garcia said. “Knowing that my parents would have crazy hours, I would help out and make sure that my siblings had lunch for them when they came to school, or if they needed to pack anything, I took on that responsibility … Food [was] always very much engraved in our every day.”

In 1977, one of the most smuggled goods at Rice was sandwiches. The perpetrators were the women’s volleyball team, forced to sneak food out of the serveries to accommodate for their practice time at the gym, which overlapped with dinner times. Neither Rice nor the athletics department had made any mealtime provisions for female athletes at the time, according to Helen Travis Savitsky (’80), who was on the volleyball and swim teams during her time at Rice.

“There was always competition for time in the gym … The only time that we could get access to it was during dinner,” Savitsky said. “At that time, dinner was a seated meal that went from time A to time B. There was no other place to go get something to eat. In my sophomore year,

Five years earlier, Title IX was passed, prohibiting discrimination in educational programs and thereby giving women equal resources and opportunities in athletics. This change was not instantaneous, though. Savitsky said that strides toward closing the gender gap in athletics was a slow process, happening over the course of many years.

“Some of the people who were seniors when I was a freshman had volleyball, but it was a club sport. It wasn’t an intercollegiate sport. And it changed from being a club sport to an intercollegiate sport … right as I came in,” Savitsky said.

“So even though Title IX had passed, Rice didn’t just jump on board in 1972.”

Before Title IX had fully taken effect, the starkest disparity between male and

female athletics at Rice was the sheer lack of resources allotted to the latter. It didn’t stop at smuggled sandwiches. According to Savitsky, funding for equipment and transportation for female athletics was little-to-nonexistent.

“We played other schools in Texas,” Savitsky said. “We got there in passenger vans. We didn’t fly anywhere, [it] didn’t matter how long the drive was. We stayed four [people] to a room in hotels that you wouldn’t set foot in today. We ate at places where I wouldn’t even stop to get a glass of water. I mean, there was no money.”

This wasn’t the case for male athletics, where plenty of funding already existed. James Disch, the former coach for intercollegiate women’s volleyball and basketball teams, said that funding for men’s team cemented them as a fully functioning program. The same couldn’t be said for the women’s team, though.

“The men’s program was fully funded. There [were] scholarships, there were paid coaches. It was a program,” Disch said. “The only thing that made the women’s program intercollegiate was the fact that we were playing other people. It was really glorified intramurals.”

Garcia said she was always inclined toward the culinary arts, and took up other creative pursuits like art, dance and theatre at Cypress Ridge High School. After she graduated, she moved to New York to attend the Culinary Institute of America, the “Harvard of culinary” and the only school she applied to.

“I went there with the mentality of, ‘Oh my god, I’m just so excited, I’m here to learn, I’m gonna take it all in,’” Garcia said. “And really be grateful for the possibility that I could even go to culinary school, because it was very expensive … I’m the oldest of my family, so [being] the first one leaving the home and going through the process, and then leaving the state … it was a little scary, but the excitement was way bigger than that.”

EDITOR

MORGAN GAGE EDITOR-IN-CHIEF

You definitely have to cook food that speaks to you and what you believe. It has to be aligned with what you do, because cooking is an art form.

Evelyn Garcia “TOP CHEF” FINALIST, JŪN CO-OWNER

‘A

The only thing that made the women’s program intercollegiate was the fact that we were playing other people. It was really glorified intramurals.

James Disch FORMER RICE WOMEN’S VOLLEYBALL & BASKETBALL COACH

RIYA MISRA FEATURES EDITOR

SEE WOMEN PAGE 6

GUILLIAN PAGUILA / THRESHER

COURTESY CAMPANILE

EDITOR

ChatGPT, an artificial intelligence chatbot, has raised concerns in academic institutions over its implications for plagiarism. Rice University’s students, faculty and administrators alike respond to whether ChatGPT has a place in higher education.

Dean of Undergraduates Bridget Gorman said that the Rice administration is in no hurry to change its academic integrity policies to include AI tools like ChatGPT, despite some peer universities such as Washington University in St. Louis amending their policies in response to ChatGPT.

“I don’t really view [ChatGPT] any differently than any other evolution over time as technology has changed … This is just another notch along the way,” Gorman said “It’s still very new … If you’re going to stand up and change a policy, you need to be really confident and understand why and what you hope to achieve with that change … because these have real implications for students.”

Gorman said the ultimate judges of ChatGPT’s appropriate use in the university are the faculty senate, the individual faculty members and then the students.

“At the end of the day, [professors] can still call their class in and sit everybody down and say, ‘Here’s a blue book, get out a pen. You have 15 minutes to answer this question.’” Gorman said. “There’s a lot of different ways that [faculty] could try to think about interacting with [ChatGPT].”

Rice professors have reacted to ChatGPT in various ways. English professor Amanda Johnson, for instance, added a syllabus policy regarding papers that read as if they are written by ChatGPT.

“My policy states that such papers must be completely redone so that the new document presents an original argument. The student must also support this original argument with specific examples, detailed analysis and verifiable citations,” Johnson wrote in an email to the Thresher.

Johnson said when ChatGPT launched, she immediately saw how students unsure about their writing skills might be tempted to use it to generate a paper. However, she actively dissuades her students from using ChatGPT by pointing out its many drawbacks.

“ChatGPT’s ‘essays’ offer arguments that, at best, are so broad and basic that they could apply to almost anything,” Johnson said. “For example, ChatGPT told me that the 2019 film ‘Knives Out’ ‘is known for its wit, strong performances and a clever plot that keeps the audience guessing until the end,’ but the same could be said of ‘Reservoir Dogs’,

When novelty fades: Rice responds to ChatGPT with mixed reviews

which is a very different film that came out in 1992. Any student paper that relies on such statements, then, will ultimately fail to convey a clear, original, consequential argument.”

Moreover, Johnson said when ChatGPT is prompted to make specific or elaborate statements about a topic, it is prone to making statements that are, quite frankly, wrong.

“When I asked it to summarize the Edgar Allan Poe story ‘The Black Cat,’ the summary it produced contained a factual error in almost every sentence,” Johnson said. “Because ChatGPT cites zero sources for its claims and because new technologies often carry with them a deceptive sense of authority, I am most urgently concerned with students asking it research questions and becoming the victims of misinformation.”

BioSciences professor Jon Flynn, on the other hand, has allowed his BIOS 442 class to utilize ChatGPT for their most recent exam.

“For this exam, AI assistance may be used as much as you like … However, please keep in mind that experimental design often has a delicate logic to it, and it is something that Large Language Models (LLMs) like ChatGPT routinely have trouble with … Without knowledge in the field to provide an anchor, they can rapidly lead you astray,” Flynn’s assignment reads.

Celeste Wang, a student of this class, said this specific exam is composed of five free response questions that requires them to critically think about the research papers they’ve read, methods they’ve learned and how to apply them.

“[Flynn] literally told us, ‘You can use ChatGPT. I ran my test through it, you’ll get a B if you do it.’ And then he told us about how ChatGPT … makes you sound good, but doesn’t really answer the questions. But he said … it’s a good starting point,” Wang,

CDOD hosts conversation on Fizz

quite a lot and very often, and it has been taking place since Fizz first got to campus last semester.”

a Lovett College junior, said. “I think that’s really helpful because I at least know what I can work with, that there is a beginning point, rather than scouring the entire internet.”

Pedro Ribeiro, the external vice chair of the Honor Council and a co-chair of the council’s AI task force created early this semester, said their official stance on ChatGPT is students shouldn’t use ChatGPT without crediting it.

“Basically, the Honor Council treats ChatGPT as any other source: if you use any of its ideas, you must cite it. As for using it to add grammar or style, that is up to the discretion of the professor,” Riberiro said. “We want students to be submitting their own ideas and their own contributions, both because we want people to learn, and because we want to be a respected institution. But I think [ChatGPT] definitely has good uses that are well within academic integrity.”

Ribeiro said that the AI task force has sent a statement to all faculty, which indicates that utilizing AI software to generate ideas without crediting it should be considered plagiarism, and encouraged them to put it in their syllabi.

“If something is bad, you need to put it on the assignment directions, because otherwise [Honor Council] can’t adjudicate it,” Ribeiro said. “If we’re going to trust students to follow the Honor Code, we need to be clear on what the code is. Because for some classes, maybe it is allowed to use ChatGPT. And something we’ve been really emphasizing to professors is to be clear — as clear as possible.”

Ribeiro said the AI task force has been testing some plagiarism detection softwares but need more data to make a recommendation to the Honor council.

Elysia Wu, a Lovett senior majoring in Neuroscience and English, said she primarily uses ChatGPT as a tool for literature review.

“I feel like the benefit of ChatGPT is that

it can source a lot of information at once, and that can help a lot when you’re parsing through a lot of information and attempting to write a paper that needs to be informed by a lot of sources,” Wu said.

Wu said that despite ChatGPT having constraints and limitations, it is overall still a benefit to people who are looking to learn and use the internet to be more efficient and productive in their work.

“I think asking students to memorize quizlets and stuff like that … has been long overdue anyways. I think it’s a real reality that whenever you’re in the workplace, you can probably just Google something,” Wu said.

Clayton Ramsey, a Baker College senior studying computer science and electrical engineering, said he believes ChatGPT is often “confidently wrong.”

“It’s very easy to get a good-looking result that means absolutely nothing … I spend as much time verifying [the codes it produces] as I would have to just write it from scratch myself,” Ramsey said.

Ramsey said using ChatGPT on assignments should be handled the same way as getting help from a friend.

“If I talked to a friend about my essay, and they had a good idea I wanted to go explore, I think that’d be fun,” Ramsey said. “But if I talk to my friend about an essay, and I just lifted their words straight out of their mouth onto my paper, that would be dishonest.”

Some Rice students have used ChatGPT during exams and quizzes. An anonymous senior said they seeked ChatGPT’s help during a take-home exam to check their answers.

“I had this problem that asked me to make a diagram, and I pasted the prompt into ChatGPT. I compared my response to ChatGPT’s, and I think [ChatGPT is] wrong on some tiny details, so I didn’t end up using its answers … I think ChatGPT is not that helpful during exams because it’s not guaranteed to be 100% correct,” the source says. “Also, it crashed, and I had to restart it before it gave me a valid response.”

Another anonymous senior said they utilize ChatGPT for discussion posts and lab assignments.

“It helps me find resources like scientific articles to quote and helps me with the smoothness of my writing. I have been able to make higher grades on my assignments because of [ChatGPT],” the source says.

Gorman said using ChatGPT in a way that violates Rice’s honor code is a high stakes game that’s low in return.

“If you choose to engage in behavior that’s found to be academically dishonest, the consequences are potentially quite severe,” Gorman said. “Don’t do it. Not worth it.”

The Office of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion hosted a conversation about Fizz on March 2.

The Office of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion hosted a conversation about Fizz, an anonymous social media platform, as a continuation of the Critical Dialogues on Diversity series. Panelists spoke about the dangers of anonymity, impacts on the culture of care and how the conversations on the app are representative of the student body as a whole.

Angelina Hall, a teaching assistant for CDOD and diversity facilitator, served as one of the panelists for the discussion. She co-wrote an opinion piece about Fizz and the culture of care last fall. Hall spoke about the dangers of the app, including her own experiences and specific conversation themes she has noticed.

“There have been a lot of conversations about body shaming and fatphobia; there was a conversation chain that went on for about two weeks while we were on winter break about that topic,” Hall, a Brown College junior, said. “I feel like this happens

Professor of anthropology Baird Campbell, another panelist, spoke about the theory behind dialectics, social media and why the combination of the two makes regulating Fizz a difficult topic to approach.

“[Dialectics] are defined by the fact that they can’t be resolved,” Campbell said. “This is the issue with there being so many of them in the structure of social media… there really isn’t a great answer for what to do to make this really way better or different.”

Campbell said that he believes the darkest places on the internet are often anonymous.

“Once you’re totally anonymous, you can sort of do whatever you want. And people have to decide whether they’re going to trust or distrust you. They’re going to have to decide whether they want to spend their time engaging with [the anonymous entity],” Campbell said. “And ultimately, the more and more of this process there is,

the less likely we are to be able to moderate it meaningfully do anything about it.”

Jazmine Castillo also served as a panelist to the discussion and shared her experiences with fatphobia and discriminatory messages against minorities on Fizz. She wrote an article about fatphobia following a discussion on Fizz over winter break.

“A lot of things that are being discussed are not just conversations that are happening on Fizz but lived experiences by people on this campus,” Castillo, a McMurtry College senior, said. “And oftentimes, the anonymity that empowers the people to say derogatory or discriminatory comments on Fizz is the same anonymity that allows

people to respond to them.”

Campbell said he encourages students to consider what Rice’s culture of care really means.

“Right here in Texas, forms of ‘care’ have been used to justify incarcerating migrants, racialized policing, and banning access to reproductive healthcare,” Campbell said. “In short, to say that your culture is one of ‘care’ doesn’t mean much in and of itself. The controversy generated about Fizz seems like an invitation to the campus community to define exactly what our values are, perhaps grounded in the idea of [culture of care]. That is: what does the Rice community—and the Rice administration— stand for, and what does it stand against?”

KAT(HER)INE HUI / THRESHER

MARIA MORKAS ASST. NEWS EDITOR

BONNIE ZHAO MANAGING

LILY REMINGTON / THRESHER

An im-PRESS-ive acquisition: Rice procures replica of William Blake’s printing press

image and he spent his entire life dedicated to that.”

Regier says the printing press will be useful for making concepts taught in the classroom tangible. demonstrations of course materials.

“It takes the theory [of] what we learned theoretically in the classroom and makes it real. It’s practical,” Regier said. “You learn a tremendous amount about what it means to produce, to create, and you learn something about the object.”

Regier says the plan is not for the printing press to be displayed merely as an artifact, but instead to use the technology to make concepts taught in the classroom tangible.

“This is not something to be sort of locked away and just be like, a museum piece. It’s supposed to be a teaching and a research tool,” Regier said. “It takes the theory [of] what we learned theoretically in the classroom and makes it real … You learn a tremendous amount about what it means to produce, to create, and you learn something about the object.”

Regier says the printing press will be beneficial for students outside of the humanities as well.

Rice University is now the home to a functional star-wheeled, copper plate, rolling press that the prominent, Romanticperiod English poet William Blake used to create some of his famous pieces. The printing press, housed in the Woodson Research Center at Fondren Library, is the only functional replica in North America.

Alexander Regier, a professor of English and of modern and classical literatures and cultures in the School of Humanities, and Sara Lowman, the vice provost and university librarian, worked with printmaker Michael Phillips to acquire the press using resources from Fondren’s Hobby Family Fund.

In the past, Regier and Fondren Library have partnered to obtain Phillips’ replicas of the copper plates used by William Blake. Regier says his personal relationship with Phillips played a role in Rice’s acquisition of the printing press.

“We kept up the correspondence … And then we were on the phone for some reason. And he said, ‘Oh, the press needs a new

home.’ And I said, ‘Okay, sure. You know, what about Rice?’” Regier said.

Lowman says that an endowment established by Oveta Culp Hobby was used to purchase the printing press because of a personal connection between the Hobby family and the English department.

“It was great because [Oveta Culp Hobby’s] daughter in law, Diana Hobby, worked for studies and English literature, which is now what Dr. Regier is the editor of,” Lowman said, “So when [Regier] approached me about this, I thought, this is a great fit for this fund, because Diana Hobby would be so pleased that we could use that state gift from her mother in-law to purchase something that was so much interest to a faculty member.”

Regier says this particular type of printing press holds historical significance for being the first to invent a method that allowed Blake to combine words and images using one device.

“[William Blake] is one of the great poets of the English language, he is one of the great artists that we have,” Regier said, “And he was somebody that combined the idea of what is the written word and the

“I’ve already been in touch with some engineers saying we can print really cool [copper] plates in the design kitchen, and then do some inking, and then printing,” Regier said., “So that’d be interesting bringing two pieces of the campus together also.”

Lowman says supporting practical learning experience is a priority for Fondren

Library when evaluating how to utilize resources from endowments.

“There’s a movement to make Rice a central hub of scholarship in terms of practical learning,” Lowman said.. “And that’s what this printing press represents. From the perspective of Fondren Library, that is a shared goal between the departments of acquiring pieces like this, in the spirit of bringing practical learning and teaching opportunities to the wide student body and to the faculty at Rice.” Lowman said.

In addition, Regier says that the acquisition will also bring scholars from other institutions to collaborate with Rice students.

“There will be external visiting people coming here to visit [the press],” Regier said. “We’ve already organized a workshop for later in March, from visiting scholars from all over the country, and those scholars can also connect with the students.”

Lowman says the printing press’ home in the Woodson Research Center will support student investigation.

“It’s because they have the primary source material… so that’s what we’re trying to do in the Woodson [Research Center] and they have a really great staff that, you know, works on oral histories and teaches students how to do oral histories and what questions to ask people so that you get really good information from them,” Lowman said.

Lowman says the acquisition of the printing press is part of a goal of Fondren’s goal to support students’ needs for learning and research.

“We want to hear from [students] about what they want from the library. And that’s our job to support their learning and in their research, and we do want to hear their ideas and what they want us to do,” Lowman said.

Danish delegation visits Rice business school

The Jones School of Business hosted a delegation from Denmark for a roundtable discussion about innovation at Rice and the potential for collaboration between the university and Denmark. Guests included the Danish Minister for Industry, Business, and Financial Affairs, members of Parliament’s committee for business and representatives from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

Items on the agenda included Rice’s innovation ecosystem, the university’s relationships with the energy, space and life sciences industries and policy.

Zoran Perunovic, senior director of Rice business, moderated the discussion and began the roundtable by addressing, in his own words, what “the secret sauce” of Rice’s success was. Dean of Rice Business Peter Rodriguez attributed Rice’s success to high academic standards, generous financial aid and the unique environment Houston provides for business.

“I think the city and the region’s economy supports [Rice business],” Rodriguez said, referencing Houston’s role in the energy industry and growth in biosciences. “From the business school perspective … [Rice] has a great name for itself in innovation and entrepreneurship … Also, I would say, Houston rewards risk

takers. It likes to see success … and that’s a great environment for us.”

International partnerships and collaboration — perhaps between Rice and Denmark — were the undercurrent of the conversation. Ramamoorthy Ramesh, vice president for research, said that Rice is actively looking to strengthen their partnerships globally, pointing towards the recent establishment of a Paris satellite campus.

Mette Reissmann, member of the Danish Social Democratic party, brought up the concern of women’s inclusion and involvement in Rice’s business school operations. Out of 12 participants in the discussion from Rice, only one woman — Jing Zhou, the deputy dean of academic affairs in Rice business — was included.

Managing Director of the Rice Alliance for Technology and Entrepreneurship Brad Burke said that Rice business

makes active efforts to include women. According to Burke, over half of the startups in the business school’s intercollegiate startup competition were women, and, in this same competition, special prizes are offered for women-led startups. Among other initiatives, Rice business invites venture and investment firms that specifically invest in womenled businesses to the startup competition, Burke said.

MURTAZA KAZMI THRESHER STAFF

MORGAN GAGE EDITOR-IN-CHIEF

KAT(HER)INE HUI / THRESHER Danish delegation visited Rice University on March 6.

KAT(HER)INE HUI / THRESHER The printing press is currently located in the Woodson Research Center at Fondren Library.

KAT(HER)INE HUI / THRESHER Rice University has acquired a printing press used by English poet William Blake.

Dilf disrupts: Fake candidate siphons votes in otherwise uncontested election

HADLEY MEDLOCK ASST. A&E EDITOR

Solomon Ni will serve as the next Student Association president, receiving 67% of the votes in the formally uncontested presidential election. “Dilf Hunter,” a fake candidate created by the Thresher Backpage, received 22% of the vote in a satirical write-in campaign, and 10% went to other write-in candidates.

A total of 665 votes were cast in the presidential election, with a voter turnout of 15.02%, down from last year’s 26.81%.

Alison Qiu will serve as next year’s internal vice president, Crystal Unegbu will serve as the next external vice president and Yuv Sachdeva will serve as the next treasurer. All three of these positions were also uncontested.

A special election will have to be held for the position of secretary, as 380 blank votes left the race without a winner. Imaje Harvey, a Sid Richardson College freshman, ran a writein campaign that received 26% of the votes with 174 ballots, and Dilf Hunter received 110 votes, good for 17%.

Spencer Powers, the SA’s director of elections, said he believes a large part of the lower voter turnout was due to the slate of uncontested candidates. Students may have felt that their votes did not necessarily matter, he said.

Additionally, Powers was unconvinced that Dilf Hunter’s performance suggested discontent with the SA.

“I don’t think the popularity of ‘Dilf Hunter’ means that much regarding how seriously the student body can take the SA,” Powers said. “Had there been more candidates on the ballot, I doubt that as many people would have voted for him.”

On the other hand, Bria Weisz, last year’s director of elections, said she felt that the write-in of Dilf Hunter is indicative of the SA’s recent inability to be taken seriously.

“Honestly, I really appreciate the movement for Dilf Hunter as a way of students demonstrating their disapproval of the Student Association,” Weisz, a Brown College senior, said. “[It] shows that [students] have the power to organize themselves in a

meaningful way, but they’re obviously not using that energy to support the current state of the Student Association.”

Write-in races lead to special elections

Powers said that a special election will be held for the secretary position, as well as two other unfilled positions — a sophomore and senior Honor Council representative. Incidentally, Dilf Hunter received the most votes of the write-in candidates for the Honor Council seats.

Normally, an instant runoff election would be held in which voters who ranked the least popular candidate as their first choice would be able to shift their ballots to their second ranked choice instead. However, because this was just a write-in campaign with no true second choices, a lack of preferences in the race will not allow this type of runoff election to happen.

“The real issue is that we made a mistake in the first place in having that election happen at all,” Powers said. “No one noticed [the constitution] says that if nobody runs for a position, like secretary, that you’re not supposed to have a write-in campaign at all. [It’s] supposed to go directly to a special election after the general election is concluded.”

Though the timeline has not been solidified yet, Powers said the special election should happen in the coming weeks, and the SA will be accepting petitions to run for the open positions from anybody that wants to. The special election will function similarly to the first round of voting, with a week of ranked-choice voting following the petition deadline.

Low engagement

Weisz said she thinks a significant barrier to student engagement with the SA has come from a junior class that couldn’t find community during peak COVID, as well as a lack of pay for student leadership roles.

“The junior class in particular has never, in my experience, felt a huge pull towards the student community at Rice because they matriculated in the middle of COVID,” Weisz said. “I think the whole thing is kind of pointing to a larger issue of people not feeling

like they want to work for the school in that way … it’s ridiculous how people put so much time and effort into the school and don’t really get much in return for it.”

While Weisz said she has no doubt the next Executive Council will step into their positions well, she also believes the uncontested races and lack of choice in the election will make student body engagement with the SA more difficult this coming year.

“I can tell there is a huge [sense of] apathy towards the Student Association recently,” Weisz said, “And I don’t expect that to get better anytime soon.”

Despite low voter turnout and satirical write-in candidates, Ni said he was proud to see the turnout for voting on blanket tax status for two organizations, an initiative they have been working on since their time as SA treasurer this past year.

“There weren’t a lot of things on the ballot that were salient to the student body. I think the most salient points, and the ones I’m most proud of, are the fact that the Rice Women’s Resource Center and Civic Duty Rice got approved for blanket tax status,” Ni said.

Qiu said that while the voter turnout this year was disappointing, it was expected.

She said she hopes to help encourage more campus connection to the SA, as well as reorganize their standing committees, during her time as IVP, hopefully encouraging more voter turnout next year.

“One thing we’re going to talk about in our next meeting is not combining the committees but reorganizing the standing committees,” Qiu said. “[We also will] potentially talk about keeping the SA information more up-to-date on the website and think about more ways to do outreach across the campus in terms of hosting more events or fostering more of a sense of connection with the students.”

Beginning his term as president, Ni said he is first ready to start working on internal improvements to the SA during their first Senate on March 20.

“The executive committee and I have talked a lot about what we want to see in regards to the next Student Association in regards to internal engagement, as well as what we can do to better communicate to the public [and be] more transparent about the actions we’re doing, like having resolutions public,” Ni said. “Hopefully that happens when the first Senate arrives, and hopefully we set a good tone for that.”

the SA Director of Elections Spencer Powers. Infographic by Anna Chung.

EDITORIAL

RWRC presents possibilities for campus

The Rice Women’s Resource Center is now officially a blanket tax organization, joining the ranks of the Thresher, Rice Program Council and University Court, among others. RWRC will now receive funds from the $85 “blanket tax” that each student pays with their tuition. With their new designation, RWRC needs to expand the resources they offer to meaningfully reach every student they’re meant to serve.

RWRC faced its fair share of criticism during its application to the blanket tax committee. Anonymous testimony from a RWRC member highlighted disorganization in the organization, such as a lack of changeover documents. More concerningly, the testimony claimed that RWRC spent a significant amount of their budget on merchandise while menstrual products and supplies ran low.

Now, as a blanket tax organization, RWRC will certainly have the resources to

GUEST OPINION

create a real impact for Rice women. RWRC prides itself on building a more supportive and dynamic atmosphere on campus for women. However, many women on campus have likely had limited interactions and

EDITORIAL STAFF

* Indicates Editorial Board member

are able to benefit from them. RWRC has taken steps in the right direction, namely offering free Plan B. In the coming years, the organization should continue down this path and use its new funding stream to prioritize regularly stocking physical resources such as menstrual products, condoms and medication such as midol and ibuprofen.

Ben Baker-Katz* Editor-in-Chief

Morgan Gage* Editor-in-Chief

Bonnie Zhao* Managing Editor

NEWS

Hajera Naveed* Editor

Maria Morkas Asst. Editor

OPINION

Nayeli Shad* Editor

access to such efforts. While many of the RWRC’s typical events are worthwhile, such as their self defense classes, these events need to be better advertised to the entire Rice community so that more women

With more power comes more responsibility, and we are confident that RWRC will take its new status seriously. RWRC should spend the next few months building a strong internal structure that allows for accountability and transparency. The organization should also get its budget in line and clearly state its priorities for the next year, and we hope to see a plan to increase awareness of the RWRC’s services and events. Expanding RWRC’s impact on campus can truly help women — if RWRC does it in the right way.

Rice should expand free laundry detergent sheets program

Over the past year, Rice has piloted a partnership with Generation Conscious, offering zero-waste and toxic-free, refillable laundry detergent sheets to students during a pilot program at Hanszen College. The program consists of a central dispenser, in which students can refill a reusable container with 10 individual sheets at a time. These sheets are packaging free and plastic-free, and require 97% less water and 95% less carbon to produce and distribute than the average leading detergent. The pilot program ran for the duration of the Spring 2022 semester, RESP/RISE programs in the summer and the start of the Fall 2022 semester. However, it came to a screeching halt when the inventory was exhausted. While the refill station saw large utilization numbers – with over 15,000 laundry detergent sheets dispensed over this six month time-frame – and the exit survey of the pilot program revealed overwhelmingly positive reviews, administration at Rice have been hesitant to commit to the program at all residential colleges, and as a result the status of accessible and sustainable laundry at Rice has entered an increasingly vulnerable state. If we want sustainable laundry to be the reality for Rice students for years to come, we must continue to be vocal and encourage Rice to follow through on its commitments to climate justice.

As someone who is actively engaged with the program in my roles as a zero waste intern at the Administrative Center for Sustainability and Energy Management and an environmental justice coordinator at Generation Conscious, I have had the pleasure of witnessing the positive impact this program has made at Rice, beyond giving students access to free laundry detergent. Generation Conscious has been able to engender change within the Rice community due to its undeniable compatibility with Rice’s commitments to reach carbon neutrality and promoting cultural inclusivity, including but not limited to, eliminating hygiene insecurity, reducing plastic and water waste, and

replacing pollutive infrastructure with sustainable, accessible and equitable substitutes. The detergent refill station reaches carbon parity to the traditional pod and liquid detergents after merely 750 sheets are used, and every additional sheet after that saves 0.14kg of carbon dioxide. Applying this to the Rice population yields that if two out of three students swap their current detergent for the sheets, Rice can halve the climate impact of laundry by 2030.

legislation was unanimously ratified on Feb. 20, demanding the administration fund the yearly inventory to supply each member of the undergraduate student body with 5 refills of 10 detergent sheets. The highlights of the resolution, which can be found in the SA’s documentation, that garnered excitement among student leaders were FGLI employment opportunities, reducing Rice’s net climate impact through emissions reduction and student fellowship opportunities. As the SA is empowered by the opinions of the student body, the unanimous support for this new legislation emphasizes the overwhelming support the program has gained throughout its pilot. The SA uses its power and legislation to then inform the Rice administration of general attitudes on campus, and this legislation is no exception to that rule.

FEATURES

Riya Misra* Editor

Sarah Knowlton Asst. Editor

ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT

Michelle Gachelin* Editor

Hadley Medlock Asst. Editor

SPORTS

Daniel Schrager* Editor

Pavithr Goli Asst. Editor

SPECIAL PROJECTS

Prayag Gordy* Editor

BACKPAGE

Timmy Mansfield Editor

Ndidi Nwosu Editor Andrew Kim Editor

COPY

Jonathan Cheng Editor

Annika Bhananker Editor

PHOTO, VIDEO, & WEB

Katherine Hui Photo Editor

Cali Liu Asst. Photo Editor

Camille Kao Video Editor

Eli Johns-Krull Asst. Video Editor

Brandon Chen* Web Editor

DESIGN

Robert Heeter Art & Design Director

Anna Chung News

Siddhi Narayan Opinion

Alice Sun Features

Ivana Hsyung Arts & Entertainment

Chloe Chan Sports

Lauren Yu Backpage

BUSINESS

Edelawit Negash Business Manager

Anna Rajagopal Social Media

Vanessa Chuang Distribution

As the expansion of the program continues to be postponed by the administration, Taylor Gilliam, another environmental justice coordinator at Generation Conscious, and I, in collaboration with ACSEM, have consistently fought and advocated for the continuation of the partnership. In a recent survey that we conducted, 96% of participants elected that they would like the expansion to occur, and some indicated they would be willing to increase their tuition by up to $15 to fund the program. Most recently, we drafted a resolution in conjunction with the Environmental Committee of the Student Association. The goal of the legislation was to emphasize that the undergraduate student body unanimously supports the expansion of the program and to call on the Rice administration to ‘Be Bold’ and fund a full expansion of the environmental justice laundry detergent programs to all residential colleges. The

ricethresher.org

While the resolution unanimously passing in SA is a huge win in our fight to secure Generation Conscious’ spot on campus, there is still work to do. A written agreement to make the program a permanent aspect of life here at Rice is still yet to come, and the support of the student body is the most powerful tool in our efforts to achieve this goal. Whether you have used the program before or you are just now learning that it exists, it is imperative that we all speak up and get involved in making Rice a more sustainable and equitable place. Administrative inaction has only made the student body more eager for this program, and if we want to uphold the sacred relationship between students and our leaders that Rice so desperately wants to foster, the causes and programs students fight for must be acknowledged and implemented.

Grace Eichenour JONES COLLEGE JUNIOR

The

Solomon Ni JONES COLLEGE SOPHOMORE STUDENT ASSOCIATION PRESIDENT

ABOUT

The Rice Thresher, the official student newspaper of Rice University since 1916, is published each Wednesday during the school year, except during examination periods and holidays, by the students of Rice University.

Letters to the Editor must be received by 5 p.m. on the Friday prior to publication and must be signed, including college and year if the writer is a Rice student. The Thresher reserves the right to edit letters for content and length and to place letters on its website.

Editorial and business offices are located on the second floor of the Ley Student Center: 6100 Main St., MS-524 Houston, TX 77005-1892

Phone: (713) 348 - 4801

Email: thresher@rice.edu

Website: www.ricethresher.org

The Thresher is a member of the ACP, TIPA, CMA and CMBAM.

© Copyright 2023 ricethresher.org

With their new [BTO] designation, RWRC needs to expand the resources they offer to meaningfully reach every student they’re meant to serve.

If we want sustainable laundry to be the reality for Rice students for years to come, we must continue to be vocal and encourage Rice to follow through on its commitments to climate justice.

SA is dead, long live the SA

Student Association’s reckoning has been a long time coming. The organization is in need of urgent reform in order to be more receptive to all the students it represents.

However, with Jones College being the only college for women on campus, “only a small fraction” of women in the student body were able to live on campus, according to Otuomagie. Additionally, women still faced strict dress codes and an early curfew. Despite this, “women living on campus represented a significant milestone,” according to John B. Boles, author of “A University so Conceived: A Brief History of Rice University.”

Women’s participation in Rice’s social life was often curtailed by restrictions placed on them, but they made their own spaces at Rice. From establishing literary societies that were the center of female social life at Rice to playing the first Powderpuff game in 1950, women at Rice fought for their own Rice traditions.

For students who enjoy the women’s race during Beer Bike, thank the women at Brown College, the second female residential college at Rice, who fought for the “Tea-Trike” race in 1966.

“Modeled after the famed Beer Bike competition that was, at the time, only allowed for men, the women championed their right to participate in more reckless festivities during Rondelet weekend,” Otuomagie wrote, “The intention for the race was to allow women to have more freedom in intercollegiate competition while forcing them to retain their ‘feminine’ qualities through such things as chugging tea out of flower-covered beer cans, not allowing their posteriors to raise up from the tricycle seat,

and having a 1 a.m. curfew.”

Finally, in 1974, Beer Bike included a women’s race, and in 1975, the first woman competed in the men’s race.

Flash forward to 1994, and the Rice community created the foundation for a women’s center — the start of what we now know as the Rice Women’s Resource Center, recently voted in as a Blanket Tax Organization.

Be a part of herstory. That’s what the ad in the December 1995 issue of the Thresher prompts readers to do. “Rice Women’s Resource Center,” it reads. “Look for more details next semester.” Readers were also invited to nominate someone for an “Outstanding Rice Woman” award, which were presented at the grand opening of the center in February 1996.

Caroline Schaeffer, who planned a women’s conference that also marked the opening of the women’s resource center in 1996, said that the center hoped “to address the needs of the entire community, not only women.” The center planned to collaborate with several groups on campus, including Students Organized Against Rape, the Graduate Women’s Interest Network, Advance and the SA Commission for Women. Additionally, the RWRC would provide counseling, books and a TV and video collection.

“The center’s mission statement describes it as a ‘central location for people and groups with an interest in issues facing women,’” the Thresher wrote in 1996. “Women’s Center Director Mona Hicks said the center will serve

Celebrate women in Houston

as a clearing house for other programs rather than replace them.”

While Mona Hicks said she hoped the center would expand in the few years after 1996 to become a “gender center” and “embrace a wider set of questions about gender relations,” the Women’s Resource Center is still the Women’s Resource Center today. However, her broader vision of expanding conversations about gender and sexuality were realized. Campus established the Center for the Study of Women, Gender, and Sexuality in 2006, an outgrowth of the program of the same name.

“Schaeffer explained that the Women’s Center began as ‘the vision of a lot of people,’” the Thresher wrote in 1996. “She added that it has become a reality in less than two years because of the support of so many people.”

Unveiling a character: Kimberly Vetter, journalist at heart

From a remarkably young age, Kimberly Vetter learned how to wave around tape recorders and push microphones into people’s faces. This was a skill Vetter would carry with her for decades, as she soon grew to find out.

Vetter is now the director of presidential communications at Rice, where she manages outreach for President Reginald DesRoches, helping curate his public persona and communications with the rest of Rice.

An experienced writer herself, Vetter hails from Shreveport, Louisiana, where she grew up in a household that emphasized the importance of education. With a sociology professor father and a social worker mother, Vetter said that her childhood was marked by open discourse and attuned her to social justice issues, ultimately paving the way for her future in journalism.

“We would watch ‘60 Minutes’ [with] Barbara Walters. I loved, at a young age, watching those shows, stories, investigating and all the facts,” Vetter said. “I remember my

dad saying, ‘Well, why don’t you think about becoming a journalist?’ I would have my tape recorder and a little microphone and I would interview my parents in the backyard.”

Backyard roleplaying would eventually come to fruition when Vetter went to Centenary College of Louisiana to study communications, working at her campus newspaper. Journalism, she said, provided an outlet to channel frustration or make a statement, as Vetter found out after writing about her negative experience with a campus police officer.

“It was nice to have a voice,” Vetter said. “I wrote a column about [the officer]. And I don’t know if anything happened as a result of that column but again, the power of words and journalism as an outlet … I’m sure a lot of people identified with that. And maybe something got done.”

After graduating and obtaining her masters degree in journalism from the University of North Texas, Vetter worked as a reporter and editor for 15 years before transitioning into communications for Texas Children’s Hospital.

“I remember the first time that an executive said, ‘Just write the quote for me.’ That was hard for me because you’re not supposed to do that as a journalist,” Vetter said. “I had to change the way that I looked at things. You’re gathering voices from other people as a journalist, you are somewhat creating a voice in corporate communications.”

Vetter’s eventual move to Houston was a logical one. She had just settled down with her husband who, after an unsuccessful date in college, she had coincidentally reconnected with while working as a reporter in Corpus Christi. The two of them relocated to Houston for his job, but Vetter said that her personal ties to the city reach a bit deeper.

”My dad passed away when I was a sophomore in college. That was … a turning

point in my life because we were very close,” Vetter said. “He was from Houston. He loved Rice as well, so being back here is special.”

Vetter joined Rice at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, where she was brought onboard to manage communications for the Provost’s Office, eventually shifting to the President’s Office in July 2022.

“I enjoyed my time [in corporate communications] but was ready for a change. And when I started looking, there was a job available in the Provost’s Office,” Vetter said. “It was smack dab in the middle of the pandemic ... I didn’t meet Reggie in person, after I had landed the job, for probably three months.”

And despite being fulfilled by her current job, Vetter said she still misses the access to information that journalism provided.

“I miss being in the know,” Vetter said. “You were more informed than anyone as a reporter.”

Outside of managing Rice’s research publications and crafting Reggie’s Instagram presence, Vetter is an avid reader and audiobook consumer — as avid as possible while also parenting two children, Vetter said.

“Wally Lamb is my favorite author … I love the unveiling of a character and he does an incredible job at that,” Vetter said. “On my bedside table, I’m reading Michelle Obama’s second book. I’ve read Kiese Laymon’s ‘Heavy’ … I think good writing is important and it’s not lost today.”

When asked about her goals for the future, Vetter maintained her commitment toward serving Rice as both an institution and a community. Serving herself, though, has remained more elusive.

“Serving myself has never motivated me,” Vetter said. “I have to believe in what I’m doing. Otherwise, I’m not going to do it … But if I can feel proud of my work, I think that’s how I see as serving myself.”

This year’s Women’s History month is dedicated to the theme of “Celebrating Women who tell our Stories,” and the city of Houston has plenty of opportunities to commemorate the occasion. Here are some fun ways to spend the month of March commemorating past, present and future history-making women.

Shop at HTX Boss Babes x Ion

Support local women-owned businesses at the “HTX Boss Babes x Ion” on March 11. Here, browse products from participating vendors or listen to the line-up of female DJs. This is an opportunity to support small businesses and if you haven’t had the opportunity to visit the Ion, the new midtown-located creative collaboration hub, this is a perfect time to see the establishment in action.

Browse feminine artwork

For any art lovers, local exhibition space Elevate Creative Studios is hosting the limited-time gallery “The Art of a Woman,” which spotlights work that was made or inspired by women. Gather for a night of fashionable attire, live music and cocktails. Their opening reception takes place on March 26 and closes on March 31.

Walk around Houston

Pull on your walking shoes for the Heritage Society’s Women’s History Tours that take you through historic homes and landmarks to learn more about some of Houston’s most influential women. With stops such as the oldest surviving building constructed in Houston, participants have the opportunity to explore the complex history of female influences on the city’s development.

Discover filmmakers

The Houston Latino Film Festival features several independent and upcoming Latine filmmakers and stories centered around Latina characters and narratives. Enjoy packed schedules of feature-length and short films at the Midtown Arts and Theater Center from March 15 to 19.

Slam some poetry at an open mic Write About Now Poetry will be throwing their “Ladies Night Poetry Open Mic Night” at the AvantGarden, with tickets starting at $10. Close out Women’s History Month with a night of drinks while listening to local poets and authors or sign up to take the stage yourself on March 29.

RIYA MISRA FEATURES EDITOR

ZEISHA BENNETT / THRESHER

I miss being in the know. You were more informed than anyone as a reporter.

Kimberly Vetter DIRECTOR OF PRESIDENTIAL COMMUNICATIONS

SLOANE DOMINGO FOR THE THRESHER

VIVIAN LANG / THRESHER

COURTESY RICE UNIVERSITY

Rice students moving into the new Jones College in 1957.

ACROSS

Machine ___ Kelly

Common request for a barber

Singer Grande, for short

Unsure sounds

Peeing problem

Yell to, on the street

___ CAH TOA

“False!”

Legendary submerged island

Type of music people experiencing 35-down may listen to

Unhinged personality seen in the bottom right corner of alignment charts

Worry

Unbroken

Ugly things to look at

Girl group who sings “Wannabe”

Attention-getting sounds ___-fi

___ capita

Location of the 2016 Olympics

NOD alternative

Dangerous road phenomenon

when it freezes and a feature of 4 answers in this grid

Med. condition involving repetitive behavior

Ginger ___

Red-headed Gallagher from “Shameless”

Hipster beer type

White House resident, for short

Bodies in motion have it

Reclaim

Rear fin type

Trendy energy drink brand

Where you might get one-on-one time with a professor

Offshore platform used to obtain

What the C in UNC stands for Gossip

Tax agency, abbreviated

The top of a soccer goal

Remy from “Ratatouille”, for one

Art museum in NYC, with “The”

Memory cards, briefly

Not new

Donkey

DOWN

Luxury handbag brand

A resident of the most Mormon heavy state

Bite a little, as a puppy

Straw material for a roof Decay

Sick

Common citation format

Wheelchair-bound “Glee” character

Train tracks

“___ Not Easy Being Green” by Kermit

Issue that is not a computer’s fault

Dawg

A little hard?

Jealousy

Breakfast food commonly prepared

overnight

Thurs. follower

Elon Musk’s car brand

The Iliad or the Odyssey

Shrek, for example

Skim over

Installs a lawn

Mountaintop

One player card game

Emotion for many younguns

Plumbing piece

Digital B-day wish

Chomp

Fetish

Someone who loves starting fires, for short

test, for short

Slippy!

Inspired by Tiny Love Stories, a section of the Modern Love column by the New York Times, our new series shares the love lives of the Rice community in bite-sized stories. If you’re interested in telling us your love story, email thresher@rice.edu.

Marriage From Afar

Rice alumna (’20) Chenlin Huang met her husband in 2017 at McMurtry College’s Y2K public. They began dating soon afterwards and got married last December.

“I’m a med student in St. Louis, but I met my husband at Rice,” Huang said. “It was initially on Tinder, because he was a [mechanical engineering major] and he’s two years ahead of me, so he graduated in 2018. There were basically no chances for us to know each other in real life if it weren’t for Tinder. But we had it and we first met each other in real life at Y2K … I was at Rice for another two years, so we’ve been doing long distance since 2018.”

Huang said that she and her husband are both independent, but they call each other every day.

“I’m such an expert in long distance,” Huang said. “I think the most important thing is that you know what your love language is [and] what the other person’s love language is. Long distance definitely does not work for everybody, and it’s definitely not fun to talk about initially … We don’t really have any shenanigans going on, and we are really open and honest with each other. So I think from my standpoint, that’s the kind of person that I would want [to have] a long distance relationship with.”

freshman, met her current girlfriend at an all-girls middle school.

“All my friends were lesbians, which is also an important piece of context,” Martinez said. “I met my girlfriend in seventh grade … and then we started dating at the very end of eighth grade, which is great. We like to pretend that we started dating [in] freshman year just to make it a little bit better.”

The two of them are approaching five years of dating, a length of time that Martinez said comes with its own set of challenges — including a fanbase.

“Since we’ve been together for so long, like a lot of our longtime friends [or] even just people [who] went to the same middle school as us are weirdly invested in our relationship,” Martinez said. “We have people depending on us. Multiple people have been like, ‘You guys have to stay together. What about me?’ I’m like, ‘You’re someone [who] I interacted with twice literally four years ago. Please calm down.’”

Like Huang, Martinez is no stranger to the ins and outs of a long distance relationship, which she and her girlfriend entered into after graduating high school.

“We just decided to just go for it,” Martinez said. “Why try to break something that’s not broken?”

Tiny love stories: ‘Why try to break break something that’s not broken?’

RIYA MISRA & MICHELLE GACHELIN FEATURES EDITOR & A&E EDITOR

Rice art professor Fabiola López-Durán designs her own path

that collaborative work, either teaching or researching, is the best that we can do, because it’s where real, new knowledge is built, it’s where we are keeping ourselves accountable, it’s where we are getting better as people, researchers and teachers.”

López-Durán’s latest book, a co-edited volume with scholars around the world that took a decade in the making, was launched last Friday at Columbia University’s Buell Center for the Study of American Architecture.

“In the process of conceiving and writing it, we created a co-learning community … one which required us to push past our isolated disciplinary silos,” López-Durán said. “It was a truly collaborative project and I am very grateful for the journey of its production.”

Trailblazing directors to watch out for

ARMAN SAXENA FOR THE THRESHER

Fabiola López-Durán didn’t always want to be a historian of art and architecture; in fact, she was first trained as an architect at Universidad de Los Andes in Venezuela.

“I very, very quickly realized I was more interested in thinking about architecture … than making architecture,” López-Durán said.

López-Durán, associate professor of modern art and architecture at Rice and the Hanszen College magister, attended graduate school in Italy and France. She said she was fascinated by how the field of architecture also overlapped with art and biomedical science. At the center of her work lies an interest in the role of architecture in processes of land dispossession, environmental disasters, systemic racism and other forms of inequality.

“What I’m interested in is mainly looking at architecture from different points of view — rather than celebrating the artifacts and the author of those architectural artifacts — starting from different issues that are connected to social, political and economic life,” López-Durán said. “For example, my first book ‘Eugenics in the Garden: Transatlantic

Architecture and the Crafting of Modernity,’ investigates a particular strain of eugenics that, at the turn of the twentieth century, moved from the realms of medicine and law to design, architecture and urban planning.”

After teaching about architectural research and inquiry in Venezuela, LópezDurán decided to earn a Ph.D. in a language she didn’t know — English.

“I decided to learn a new language in order to do a Ph.D. here at MIT … and probably that has been the best decision of my life,” López-Durán said. “My training at MIT changed my life.”

López-Durán then moved to Houston to join Rice in 2011. She said that she loves the freedom she has in her research and the collaborative nature of her teaching.

“My favorite part of my work is when I work with others,” López-Durán said. “I think

The project sees López-Durán come a long way since the beginning of her teaching career in Venezuela, when she was the only woman of the five faculty members in her department. She said that now, the weight of this is clearer to her.

“I see that my strength and independence of thought, and clear understanding of myself comes from my parents, but in particular, my dad, who taught me to respect myself, to believe in myself, to be independent, to love working hard,” López-Durán said. “Every time that I’m teaching, every time that I’m saying something that I’m very convinced and passionate about, I always feel like there is a lot of responsibility, but I hope that that will be a way of inspiring young women … to walk this world … with the confidence and ability that will allow us to make important changes in the world.”

Snap a pic with these female photographers in HTX

SPRING CHENJP THRESHER STAFF

Are you a senior looking for graduation photos to commemorate your last few months at Rice, in need of a LinkedIn headshot to replace that old high school photo or just want some Instagramworthy golden hour pictures? These six photographers in the Houston area who identify as women are sure to have you covered this Women’s History Month.

Kelsea Whiting Photography

Starting off with Rice University’s very own Kelsea Whiting, this Brown College sophomore has been a professional freelance photographer since she was sixteen years old. Alongside Whiting’s graduation and individual portrait work, she does couples, families and even wedding photography. Whiting has already begun graduation shoots for the class of 2023, so be sure to fill out the contact form on her website if interested.

Kris D. Photography

Krista Davenport has been a professional photographer since her graduation from the University of Houston with a BFA in Photography in 2014. Davenport’s portfolio boasts events as varied as the Burning Man festival and Red Cross disaster relief efforts, and she has been featured in collections for the Cincinnati Art Museum, Houstonia Mag and Houston Press. Her standard photo package starts at $300 for a 30-minute session or $500 for an hour-long

session with unlimited wardrobe changes. Davenport’s studio in Richmond is less than 30 minutes from Rice, and she is available to travel, promising a turnaround of 7-10 days for photos.

Tara Flannery

For those willing to drive to The Woodlands or the Conroe area, Tara Flannery specializes in graduation, headshot and family photos alongside visual marketing development for businesses. Flannery is a Certified Professional Photographer licensed by the Professional Photographers of America Trade Association. Her headshot sessions start at $190 for a singular retouched headshot, or up to $590 for a full-service headshot including hair, makeup and wardrobe services.

Arts Houston

Photography

Enobong Houston, another University of Houston alumna, has over 11 years of experience in photography.

Specializing in senior and headshot photography, Houston offers three photo packages starting at $450. Houston’s fullservice approach includes same-day viewing for most photo sessions, wardrobe consulting and location selection.

Arts Houston Photography is a great option for those looking to support a Black-owned, LGBTQ-friendly small business.

Amanda Bailey Photography

Amanda Bailey is based in Texas City and services the greater Houston and Galveston area with a studio in Memorial Park less than a ten-minute drive from Rice. Bailey has over 15 years of photography experience, and her rates start at $500 for a 45-minute session, including consultation, styling and travel fees, if applicable. Seniors looking to shoot their graduation photos will receive 15 images; headshots are priced at $700 for 40 images.

While the male-dominated structures of film industries around the world have worked against women becoming successful, female directors throughout history have created some of the greatest films in history despite the barriers they experienced. Today, the number of women-identifying filmmakers helming acclaimed films have grown thanks to growing support for, and acceptance of, women behind the camera. In that spirit, here is a list of trailblazing womenidentifying directors to watch.

Claire Denis

“Beau Travail,” Denis’ 1999 magnum opus following French Foreign Legion officers in Djibouti, is deservedly one of the most acclaimed films of the last 30 years.

Ava DuVernay

While the rest of the filmmakers on this list are touted for their narrative work, DuVernay’s documentary “13th” can’t be ignored. This deep dive into the history of the American prison system and its relationship with racial inequality demand awareness and subsequent action.

Greta Gerwig

Probably the most widelyknown female filmmaker of her generation, Gerwig has come a long way from her mumblecore beginnings with “Nights and Weekends.” She broke out with 2017’s “Lady Bird,” for which she was nominated for Best Original Screenplay and Best Director.

Celine Sciamma

Every 10 years, the British Film Institute conducts the Sight and Sound poll, asking critics around the world for their takes on the greatest films ever made. In the 2022 edition of the poll, Sciamma’s “Portrait of a Lady on Fire” was ranked at number 30, the highest ranking for any film from the 2010s.

Charlotte Wells

Yes, Charlotte Wells has only directed one feature film. But that film was the heartfelt, poignant and complex feature “Aftersun.” With just one film, Wells has already proven herself to be an observant and empathetic filmmaker who is in no rush to bring her story to its conclusion.

SHREYA CHALLA THRESHER STAFF

I hope that [my passion] will be a way of inspiring young women … to walk this world ... with the confidence and ability that will allow us to make important changes.

Fabiola López-Durán RICE ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR OF ART

COURTESY FABIOLA LÓPEZ-DURÁN

Rice art and architecture historian Fabiola LópezDurán wears many hats, from researching eugenics in architecture to environmental disasters.

Review: ‘Good Riddance’ cements Abrams’ sad girl persona

Top Track: ‘Full Machine’

Gracie Abrams’ title of bedroom pop princess isn’t up for grabs. After breaking out with “minor” and “This Is What It Feels Like,” Abrams settles into a comfortable tonal register in “Good Riddance.” Her debut studio album is her second project with producer and co-writer Aaron Dessner. Throughout the 12 tracks, the pair holds onto Abrams’ one-note sad girl

FROM FRONT PAGE EVELYN

GARCIA

After completing her education, she honed her craft in New York City, where she worked for multiple restaurants and won an episode of Food Network’s “Chopped” in 2014. Still, Garcia said she always knew she wanted to come home.

“What is great about New York is there’s one opportunity after the other. And then next thing I know, it’s been 10 years,” Garcia said. “But once I had a better understanding of what I wanted and what I wanted to create, I was like, ‘I think it’s time to go back home and start creating this.’”

Once reacquainted with her hometown, Garcia’s new project developed into a Southeast Asian-inspired concept named Kin, which means “family” in English and “to eat” in Thai. After the pandemic forced Garcia to close her Kin Asian food stall in Rice Village’s Politan Row, Garcia partnered with chef and longtime friend Henry Lu to create by KIN HTX, a catering company and condiment line. Jūn, their new restaurant in the Heights, is an extension of their partnership and an ode to the month of June, which holds importance to their families.

COURTESY INTERSCOPE RECORDS / UNIVERSAL MUSIC AUSTRALIA

Bedroom pop princess Gracie Abrams’ debut studio album ‘Good Riddance’ is an apologetic spiral of self-sabotage, according to this reviewer.

persona in delicate string riffs and quiet confessions. “Good Riddance” succeeds most when Gracie gives us something to cry to.

On “Best,” Abrams makes it clear that “Good Riddance” is more than another breakup album. With passing confessions like “You’re the worst of my crimes,” Abrams matures out of pure heartbreak into a wallowing, apologetic spiral of selfsabotage. She chants “I never was the best to you” steadily, punctuated by emphatic

award-winning show “Top Chef.” At first, Garcia wasn’t sure that it was the right time, but decided to jump headfirst into the opportunity knowing that it scared her.

“It [came] at a time where I’m just flat out starting a new business,” Garcia said. “And whatever the outcome is, it’s going to be a lot of exposure. I don’t even think I could pay [for] the amount of PR that came out of that … I was mostly doing it for my business and knowing that I’ve worked so hard this whole time — why let this opportunity go?”

Despite the pressure she said she felt as a female Latina chef competing in her hometown, Garcia reminded herself to be more excited than anxious. The show was a rollercoaster of emotions for Garcia, who said she would take naps after creating her dishes.

“There were separators, and we would have to be quiet ‘til we were in front of the judges and whatnot. And I would literally knock out,” Garcia laughed. “I was like, ‘I just don’t want to think anymore, I’m going to go to sleep.’”

‘Holy crap, I did that, that’s me.’ I was like, ‘Wow, I look so put together,’ but inside I was losing my shit. Inside

strums and harmonies in the last chorus. As she negotiates the ruin of this relationship, “I know it won’t work” interjects to land at the more upbeat extreme of Abrams’ sound. The hook of “‘Cause part of me wants you back, but / I know it won’t work like that, huh?” acknowledges Abrams’ role in conflicted feelings between her and her former partner.

In all of Abrams’ pining, “Full machine” is a standout. Taking its title from one of several punchy metaphors, where Abrams sings, “I’m a shameless caller / You’re a full machine,” Abrams hits a vein of raw desperation that runs a little too faintly through the rest of the tracks. The postchorus, where Abrams strains, vocally and narratively, to “forc[e] a breakthrough” in the relationship, stands as one of the most memorable refrains of the album.

“Where do we go now” veers from reflective longing into a much more raw, panicked account of loss. While the plain musings of “You’re the best in my life and I lost you” and “It was one-sided, hate how I hurt you” sit nicely within the sound of the album, they fall flat in its thematic arc. The pinging synths also lead into a stretch of tracks that lilt between insistent and incessant. This edgy, shallow grit drags into the repetitive chorus of “I should hate you” and call-and-response of “Will you cry.”

Abrams’ sequencing also sells “Amelie’’ short. As a single, “Amelie” masters the dampened wistfulness Abrams has made her signature in what might shape up to be a career-defining track. But the stakes of “Amelie” settle on the internal growth of

the speaker rather than holding narrative weight in the relationship at the center of “Good Riddance.”

If “Difficult” tries to carry the selfreflexive notes from the preceding songs, it does so best in its satisfying, swelling chorus of, “Oh, I know spiraling is miserable / I should probably go back home / Why does that feel difficult, difficult?” The song is also the latest of Abrams’ work that references her family (“I’ll feel my parents slipping”), including father JJ Abrams. But instead of ushering in a turning point on the album, Gracie follows up these singles with the most performative installments of the spiteful, spiraling aftermath of her relationship in “This is what the drugs are for” and “Fault line.” “The blue” also feels misplaced with its announcement of a new lover who “came out of the blue like that.”

It’s hard to say where Abrams ends up with “Right now.” Over the almost sixminute runtime of the song, she sounds unsettled while contemplating, “What if this is it for now?” She wades through a transitory period in her life — bygone friendship, homesickness and her “past life” — without ever landing on solid ground.

Rather than using showy lyrics or vocals, Abrams relies on a formula of girlish angst. “Good Riddance” is neither a departure from Abrams’ pop ballad emotionality nor a triumphant relinquishing of a past relationship. Instead, Abrams offers a tender, numb sadness in the album’s final words, crying, “I feel like myself right now.”

“[It’s really] just creating a nice, warm, kind of homey feel, but with obviously an eye for detail and making sure our guest is comfortable and feels at home. Because we live here,” Garcia quipped, “So it is our home.”

Just as Garcia and Lu were in talks with the building for Jūn, a new opportunity was presented to her: competing in Emmy

Throughout the two monthlong period, contestants were prohibited from accessing the outside world via phone, computer or TV. Garcia called the competition a creative boot camp because it pushed her to create dishes outside of her comfort zone.

“When in normal life do you have that time to just completely peel away and have what feels like an eternity to just hone your skill, to think about how you can better yourself and [learn] very quickly, because everything’s moving so fast?” Garcia said. “The only thing you’re thinking about is this competition, and

then outside of that, you have no idea — I didn’t even know what the weather was like.”

Once the show aired a few months later, Garcia said that she got to experience the show again with her city, even though she already knew the outcome.

“‘Holy crap, I did that, that’s me,’” Garcia laughed. “I was like, ‘Wow, I look so put together,’ but inside I was losing my shit. Inside I was freaking out. But it was cool to see [the show] in a different perspective — when you’re in it, you don’t see anybody. There’s a bunch of cameras, but really, you’re with the same 15 people and the staff, and it’s the same people you see for two months straight.”

Intentionally pushing herself out of her comfort zone is a practice that Garcia brings from her time in front of the camera to her current leadership style as a chef.

“You definitely have to cook food that speaks to you and what you believe. It has to be aligned with what you do, because cooking is an art form. It is definitely a passion project. You work very long hours, you work very hard, and not just mentally, physically — it’s all the things combined,” Garcia said. “It is a lot of work, but the biggest part of that is really knowing how to lead and lead by example, lead people that are as passionate, as creative as you.”

MICHELLE GACHELIN / THRESHER Chef Evelyn Garcia stands inside Jūn, the new restaurant she co-owns with Henry Lu. Jūn is the newest project of KIN HTX, Garcia and Lu’s Southeast Asian-inspired food concept.

I was freaking out. But it was cool to see [the show] in a different perspective — when you’re in it, you don’t see anybody. There’s a bunch of cameras, but really, you’re with the same 15 people and the staff, and it’s the same people you see for two months straight

Evelyn Garcia

“TOP CHEF” FINALIST, JŪN CO-OWNER

HANNAH SON FOR THE THRESHER

Red-hot WBB enters conference tourney as No. 3 seed

CADAN HANSON SENIOR WRITER

Rice women’s basketball head coach Lindsey Edmond’s goal for the Conference USA tournament is simple.

“Cut down nets,” Edmonds said.

Last weekend, Edmonds’s Owls swept their final regular season games, defeating Florida Atlantic University and Florida International University, conquering the Sunshine State. According to Edmonds, the Owls are playing their best basketball at the best possible time.

“I’ve talked all season about wanting to be playing our best basketball in March and I think that is exactly what we are doing,” Edmonds said. “We are getting off to great starts in games, we have been continuing to be aggressive even when we have the lead. We have been having a great inside out game which allows for a very balanced attack of scoring, and we have put more of an emphasis on getting defensive stops.”

Edmond’s team enters the tournament as the No. 3 seed. But despite their high seed and first round bye, Edmonds said the team could have been seeded higher.

“I look back at the season and it is hard not to think, ‘man, if we didn’t let that one slip out of our fingers on the road’ or ‘if we didn’t lose that one at home,’ we could have even finished second in the league,” Edmonds said.

The Owls will face the winner of No. 6 University of Texas at San Antonio and No. 11 Florida Atlantic University on Thursday. During the regular season, the Owls swept FAU and split their matchups with UTSA. Despite her team’s relative success, Edmonds said that she doesn’t want to overlook the first round matchup.

“Tournament time is a new season, and I know from my years of experience that anything goes during this time of year,” Edmonds said. “Yes we were able to beat those teams in the regular season but we have to have a different mindset now, a sharper focus and a mentality of it doesn’t matter who we are facing or what happened during the regular season.”

Looking ahead, if the Owls advance, they will likely have to face off against the top two seeds, No. 2 Western Kentucky University and the top seed Middle Tennessee State University. However, Edmonds said that postseason play is unpredictable and the Owls could pull off an upset.

“Again, it is tournament time and anything can happen,” Edmonds said. “I don’t think that a higher seed guarantees a win, just like a lower seed doesn’t guarantee you to lose. I want my team going into each game with confidence and knowing that they can play with anyone that we may face. My message to the team is the same now as it always has been, start fast, play

hard and together for 40 minutes, and to never quit.”

A huge factor that could help the Owls go deep into the tournament is the experienced senior class who have been a part of numerous C-USA tournament runs, including a trip to the finals in 2021. Even with the veteran leadership, Edmonds said that it will take the entire team to make it to Saturday.

“I think our whole team needs to step up this week in order to accomplish what we want to do,” Edmonds said. “We haven’t played three days in a row this season so, I think our depth can really help us but

everyone needs to bring what they do best to this team. We must bring our A game and leave it all on the floor each day.”

The Owls travel to Frisco, TX, riding a five-game win streak, the strongest consecutive performance since their record breaking 9-0 start in non-conference play. According to Edmonds, the team is building momentum at just the right time.

“I think it gives our young ladies a lot of confidence knowing that we have won five straight,” Edmonds said. “It feels like we are really clicking as a team and playing great basketball right now and that momentum going into the tourney is huge.”

MBB hopes to reverse recent fortunes in C-USA tournament

The Rice men’s basketball team enters this week’s Conference USA tournament in Frisco as the No. 6 seed, as they hope to qualify for the Big Dance for the first time since 1970. The Owls will face off against the University of Texas at San Antonio, the No.11 seed, on Wednesday at 8:30 pm. On a four-game losing streak, the Owls look to turn around their fate at a critical juncture of their season. Despite their recent struggle, head coach Scott Pera is confident that his team will show up in

EDITORIAL

their biggest game of the year.

“We are looking to play our best game of the year when it matters most on Wednesday night,” Pera said.

The Owls split their two-game season series against their first-round opponent, defeating the Roadrunners 88-81 in San Antonio during a mid-January game that went into overtime, but lost 84-79 at home against them in mid-February.

With an overall record of 17-14 on the season, the Owls are 8-12 against C-USA opponents and are 3-7 against teams in this year’s conference tournament. The Owls started the season on a hot streak,

entering February with a 15-6 overall record. However, the Owls failed to find success in February and early March, going 2-8 for the rest of the regular season.

Entering the tournament, the Owls’ offense has been a clear strength, scoring 77.4 points per game, which ranks at No. 52 out of the 352 Division I teams. In addition, the Owls rank No. 39 in assists and No. 28 in three-pointers made per game.

According to junior guard Quincy Olivari, he believes that what makes the team so strong on the offensive side of the ball is how unpredictable they are.

Another strength that the team can rely on, according to Pera, is their veteran’s presence. The Owls are led by a trio of upperclassmen with tournament experience, which Pera said can guide them through the postseason.

“We’ve played well in the venue, We’ve won conference tournament games the last two years and can count on our veterans to help carry us,” Pera said.

We’ve played well in the venue. We’ve won conference tournament games the last two years and can count on our veterans to help carry us.

Scott

“We share the ball and our offense is so random that it kind of makes us hard to scout,” Olivari said. “When we’re having fun, we’re dangerous. We just got to make sure that we stay focused on the game plan and stay together when things get hard.”

Olivari leads the team in scoring with 19.3 points per game, while fellow junior guard Travis Evee was close behind at 15.4. Junior forward Max Fiedler helps conduct the offense, leading the conference with 5.1 assists a game. According to Olivari, the biggest key for the team to make a deep run in the conference tournament is to play together and follow their game plan.

“We need to play as a unit and make sure everyone’s connected, and on the same page, and following the game plan to a tee,” Olivari said.

Despite the factors that swing in their favor, the Owls need to overcome their biggest weakness, which is their defense. The Owls rank N0. 322 out of 363 teams in Division I basketball in points allowed per game, at 76.2 points per game. Despite allowing 90 points in consecutive games to close the regular season, Pera is confident that the team will fix these weaknesses when they face off against the Roadrunners on Wednesday by being more focused.

“We need to put on a firmer mind, realizing how important it is, and [be] excited about playing Wednesday night, which the guys will be and we’ll put our best foot forward,” Pera said.

If the Owls defeat their in-state rivals on Wednesday, they will face off against the University of Alabama at Birmingham in the quarter-finals on Thursday at 8:30 p.m. The semi-finals will take place on Friday and the final will be held on Saturday.

“What’s a defense mechanism?”

“Owl-American”

CARTOON

PAVITHR GOLI ASST. SPORTS EDITOR

Pera HEAD COACH

KATHERINE HUI / THRESHER Rice guard Destiny Jackson attempts a shot before a recent game. The Owls enter the C-USA tournament as the No. 3 seed and on a five game winning streak

HONG LIN TSAI / THRESHER

I’ve talked all season about wanting to be playing our best basketball in March and I think that is exactly what we are doing.

Lindsay Edmonds HEAD COACH

Women’s tennis narrowly avoids sweep against No. 10 UT

The Rice women’s tennis team fell 6-1 on Saturday afternoon to the two-time defending national champion No. 10 University of Texas at Austin. The sky was clear and the sun was scorching at the George R. Brown Tennis Center where the Owls faced off against their second top-25 opponent in the last month. Despite being swept by now-No. 7 Texas A&M University, the Owls were on a three-match winning streak heading into Saturday’s bout with the Longhorns. According to head coach Elizabeth Schmidt, the Owls hoped to build off their recent form and get a win at home.

“We go out expecting to win and expecting to get better so we wanted to go out there and compete hard and win the match,” Schmidt said. “[We] wanted to continue to build on the fight that our team showed last match, continue to build on the doubles that we’ve been practicing quite a bit on.”

Two of the three doubles matches finished swiftly for both teams. Sophomore Allison Zipoli and fifth-year Diae El Jardi were the first to drop, losing their match 6-2 on the first court. On the third court, however, sophomore Saara Orav and freshman Darya Schwartzman won their set 6-2. The final match for the team doubles point was left at the hands of junior Federica Trevisan and senior Maria Budin. All eyes went to the middle court, where the Owls started with a 3-1 game lead, but eventually fell behind 5-4. After a long rally for the last point in the game, the Longhorns took the set 6-4 and the doubles point. Despite losing out on the doubles point, Schwartzman explained that their doubles match win gave the team

some momentum heading into the singles matches.

“I felt that we can actually do it,” Schwartzman said. “Saara [Orav] and I supported each other and even when things didn’t go as we wanted, we knew that we had another ball and another ball and that we could do it.”

Most of the singles matches were quickly taken by the Longhorns. Courts one, three, four and five were all dropped by the Owls in straight sets, giving the Longhorns a 5-0 lead in overall points. Courts two and six saw doubles returners Trevisan and Schwartzman, respectively, battling until the third set to try to avoid the sweep. Trevisan won her first set against No. 70 Charlotte Chavatipon with a winded 7-5, but dropped the second set 6-2. They opted for a firstto-ten superset, which the Longhorns won despite an early Trevisan 7-5 lead.

Schwartzman dominated her first set 6-2, but dropped her second 6-1, leaving a crucial last set for Schwartzman and the Owls for any chance at an overall point for the day. Heading into this last set, she said that she knew what she had to change to turn her luck around.

“I knew that I had to start playing my tennis again,” Schwartzman said. “During the second set, I went much further from the baseline, and I had to attack. My tennis is an attacking style and I just knew that if I

wanted to win, I had to put one more ball and make her move and I just knew that I’m going to stand where I have to stand.”

Schwartzman went on to win the set 6-4, bringing the overall point tally to 6-1. According to Schmidt, the Longhorns showed why they are considered one of the best teams in the nation.

“I think you probably saw why they were the two-time defending national [champions],” Schmidt said. “I saw some quality play [from us]. We just need to do it a little bit more consistently throughout the whole match.”

The Owls return to action on Wednesday, March 15 taking on Texas A&M University at Corpus Christi back at home.

Denise Bostick Demery (’80), who played volleyball for Rice as a walkon in the late 1970s, most recalled the differences in structure for male and female athletics, which typically demanded that female teams orient themselves around the male teams.

“The men had great trainers, they had all this equipment, they had the preferred practice times,” Demery said. “We worked our times around their practice times and our game schedules around their game schedules … I remember I sprained my ankle, and I had to get assistance from a trainer, but I had to go into the male training room to get assistance there, and I had to use their equipment.”

By this point, scholarship money for female athletes was barely in existence, with significant disparities in the amount of funding offered to male and female athletes. Often, Demery said she noticed that talented female athletes were faced with expenses that their male peers had covered by scholarships.

The introduction of adequate scholarships in the 1978-79 school year had a twofold impact: it decreased barriers to athletic participation and improved camaraderie across women’s teams, according to Savitsky.

COURTESY RICE ATHLETICS

Darya Schwartzman competes against No. 10 Texas on Saturday. Schwartzman won her match in three sets, giving the Owls their only point on the day against the defending champs.

Baseball upsets Tech, bats go silent against A&M and TCU

DANIEL SCHRAGER SPORTS EDITOR

The Rice baseball team got a statement win on a big stage, beating No. 24 Texas Tech University 3-2 on Friday to open the Shriners’ College Classic at Minute Maid Park. But the rest of the weekend didn’t go as planned, and the Owls dropped games to No. 15 Texas A&M University and No. 10 Texas Christian University in lopsided fashion, bringing their record to 4-7.

Rice sent out Parker Smith, their go-to Friday starter, to open the weekend against Texas Tech. Smith shut down the Red Raiders’ offense almost entirely, allowing just three hits in six innings. His last inning was his trickiest, with a two-out hit and walk giving the Red Raiders two baserunners, but Smith forced a line-out to left to keep his shutout intact. According to associate head coach Paul Janish, who had stepped in with head coach Jose Cruz Jr. dealing with a personal matter, Smith thrives in big moments.

“He’s a jerk in the best way,” Janish said. “He loves being in that spotlight. He loves to compete.”

The Owls offense didn’t fare much better than Tech’s through three innings, although a walk, error and an infield single loaded the bases without the Owls hitting the ball out of the infield. They finally broke through in the fourth, when junior infielder/outfielder Connor Walsh hit a two-run home run into the empty right field stands.

After another two scoreless frames from Rice’s offense, junior pitcher Matthew

Linskey replaced Smith in the seventh. Linskey didn’t allow a hit, but walked three of the four Tech batters he faced to load the bases before being replaced by junior pitcher Justin Long. A wild pitch scored one runner while a sacrifice-fly scored another, but Long got out of the inning with the game tied at 2-2.

The game wasn’t tied for long though. Rice’s second batter in the seventh, junior infielder Jack Riedel swung at the first pitch, driving the ball over the exact same part of the right field wall that Walsh had cleared three innings earlier. According to Riedel, after striking out twice earlier in the game, he wasn’t looking to swing at the first pitch.

“He just threw me a good pitch to hit, and [I] just put a good swing on it,” Riedel said.

In the ninth, Long allowed a double off the top wall, but settled down with two strikeouts that sealed the 3-2 upset for Rice.

Friday’s game wasn’t so lucky for the Owls. With sophomore pitcher Mauricio Rodriguez on the mound and the roof open once again, the Owls switched dugouts to take on the No. 15 Aggies. After a double-play erased Rice’s only baserunner in the first, an error by junior infielder Pierce Gallo put the Aggies’ leadoff hitter Tab Tracy on base. The next batter, shortstop Hunter Haas, doubled Tracy home. A wild pitch scored Haas and an RBI triple made the lead 3-0. Rice’s first two batters reached base in the second, but three straight strikeouts ended the threat.

Four batters into the bottom half of the inning, with the deficit increased to four and two runners on, Cruz, who returned on Saturday, pulled Rodriguez. His

replacement, freshman and College Station native Ryland Urbanczyk, didn’t fare much better. At one point, two consecutive fourpitch walks brought chants of “ball eight” from the Aggie-heavy crowd. The chants stopped at “ball nine,” but only after four more runners had crossed the plate. Cruz said that the Owls, who have given up a combined 42 runs in four Saturday games so far, need to find a consistent second starter behind Smith.

“Right now it’s an open door,” Cruz said. “We haven’t fared very well on Saturdays for whatever reason, [we’re] trying to figure that out.”

The Aggies added three more runs in the third and two in the fourth, before Rice’s defense finally found its groove. Meanwhile, Rice’s offense couldn’t chip away at the deficit despite five hits through six innings. The Owls finally got on the board on a Riedel double in the seventh. The game was called after seven innings with A&M up 13-1.

Sunday’s game against the Horned Frogs got off to a better start for Rice with a Riedel single, but a double-play stopped them from striking first. Freshman pitcher Tom Vincent allowed a leadoff double, but settled down to escape the inning unscathed. According to Cruz, Vincent got the nod because he matched up well with TCU’s lineup.

“We were just thinking he was going to be a left-handed spot guy,” Cruz said. “But he’s showing he could do something.”

The Horned Frogs struck first, when outfielder Luke Boyers turned Vincent’s 2-2 pitch into a three-run homerun. After a 1-2-3 Rice inning, Vincient was replaced by junior Christian Cienfuegos, who allowed a homerun to his second batter. Cienfuegos made way for Linksey, who settled the defense down, but with the Owls’ offense struggling, the 4-0 deficit would prove too much.

“The thing that seems different to me, retrospectively, is how close the teammates are to each other [now]. We didn’t really have that,” Savitsky said. “We were all Rice students first and athletes second … so we weren’t very close to each other. Now that there are scholarships, and you are recruited as a scholarship athlete, [athletes] have an obligation to the team as well.”

Although Title IX was key in expanding funding and resources for women’s athletics, it also had unintended drawbacks for female athletes, according to Disch.

“The interesting thing that happened at that time, is when they started paying coaches, a lot of the women’s coaches — not at Rice, but [at] other places — lost their jobs because there were men [who] were better qualified that were now looking for these jobs,” Disch said. “[Title IX] had some kind of unanticipated cost consequences early on. A lot of the women would prefer to play for a male coach, because they felt he was better qualified and could coach them better than the women.”

In the decades since Title IX’s passing, Savitsky has also noticed that tangible student support for athletics now exists, which wasn’t necessarily true during her time as an athlete.

“Students at Rice events were few and far between,” Savitsky said. “They studied. They were all nerds. Athletics just wasn’t part of their vernacular … You got kids out there who couldn’t walk and chew gum at the same time.”

Reflecting on her own time at Rice, Demery said that the passing of Title IX helped validate her — and other female athletes’ — contribution to the university, paving the path for future athletes down the road.

“[Title IX] forced universities and schools to recognize [that] female athleticism is important … and they need the same resources,” Demery said. “I mean, we needed a new volleyball net, we needed basketballs, we needed new volleyballs, not the old ones that they had for four years.”

Connor Walsh celebrates his homerun against Texas Tech. Walsh helped the Owls to a 3-2 upset over the No. 24 Red Raiders, before falling to No. 15 Texas A&M and No. 10 TCU by a combined 20-1.

The closest Rice would get to scoring came in the fifth inning, when freshman outfielder Christian Salazar hit a two-out double to left, and tried to advance home on an error on the next at-bat. But Salazar was thrown out by at least ten feet and Rice didn’t sniff the scoreboard again all day.

This atricle has been cut off for print. Read the full article at ricethresher.org.

As the athletes from Rice’s past look to the future of the university, they said they recognized the immense strides that have been made toward building equal opportunities for female athletes.

“I was able to meet a lot of women that have been in athletics at the inauguration of President DesRoches. They came up to me … and told me about how wonderful things have become [in Rice athletics],” Leila Freeman Alguacil (’79) said. “So I would say… keep going forward.”

COURTESY RICE ATHLETICS

DIEGO PALOS RODRIGUEZ THRESHER STAFF

FROM FRONT PAGE TITLE IX

SEXISM REPARATIONS CONTRACT

This agreement (“Agreement”) is made and effective as of ________________, 20____ by and between:

Colleges: Mary Gibbs Jones College and Margarett Root Brown College (“Colleges”)

Student: ___________________________ (“Student”)

WHEREAS the Colleges were the first two all-women’s colleges on Rice University campus and conveniently the first two colleges constructed on the opposite fucking side of campus from everyone else.

IN CONSIDERATION of Women’s History Month and the universal and unwarranted hatred for and/or pity of the Colleges,

AFFIRMING that in the case that the Student does not fulfill the below reparations, then they shall henceforth be irrefutably found to hate women, the parties agree to the following overdue reparations:

Mary Gibbs Jones College

Allow the College to, in the spirit of feminism, indisputably dominate every Beer Bike, beginning with Beer Bike 2023 on April 1, 2023. All fines or penalties incurred by Jones are rendered null and void. 20% of each colleges’ water balloons are donated to Jones College. Jones’ gets a 1,957-second head start in the Beer Bike race, in honor of the year Jones College was built.

Jones is proclaimed the victor of both the color war and the water balloon fight on the morning of Beer Bike.

Suspending the association of Jones College and students of Jones College with: The Wolf Pack, Any unbecoming behavior involving goats, Characterization as cringe, annoying, ugly, fratty, stupid, corny, goofy, and/or lame.

Margarett Root Brown College include us in things pls

By signing below, the Student indicates they have read, understand, and agree to all the terms and conditions outlined in this contract.

Student Signature: Date: College Signatures: Jones College & Brown College Date: 03/08/2023

Backpage is the satire section of the Thresher, written this week by Ndidi Nwosu, Andrew Kim, and Timmy Mansfield and designed by Lauren Yu. For questions or comments, please email dilfhunter69@rice.edu.