Spin Control

The same sorts of things are happening at Rice. University spokesman Terry Shepard says Rice has more than 70 research partnerships with the Texas Medical Center, invites venture capitalists to campus to help launch Rice-affiliated businesses, and has an Office of Technology Transfer to ensure that faculty inventions make it to the marketplace. Some of these business dealings undoubtedly will benefit the common good. Shepard says that one Rice nanotechnology researcher may be leading the way to a cure for cancer. But the corporatization has negative implications as well. Rice undergraduate Ben Weston wrote a recent column for the Thresher complaining that administrators see no place for undergraduates in the university's quest to become a world-class research institution. "We don't do research," he writes. "We don't bring Rice international acclaim. Instead, we tie up the university's beautiful 50,000-watt transmitter with crap like 'Free Guitar Lessons for Animals.' We drive huge trucks around the inner loop and chuck water balloons at each other, causing a dozen injuries and a liability nightmare each year. We get drunk as hell and have to be taken to the emergency room….[A]n undergraduate population that won't behave is just in the way."

Other editorials in the Thresher have noted many Rice traditions that have been sterilized and politically corrected by the administration in order to limit liability risks: orientation-week pranks; college cheers that could offend; a drunken orgy called Night of Decadence that was once written up in Playboy magazine's list of top ten college parties; and Beer Bike, a relay race in which students guzzle beer from specially engineered cups and bike around a parking lot track. Upperclassmen and alumni remember a Rice where students studied hard and partied even harder. They remember a Rice that encouraged its students to experiment, be independent, take risks and make mistakes without ruining their lives. It was this quirky character that made Rice different from the other institutions of its academic caliber. It was this climate that made it possible for a few Rice students to start their own radio station back in 1967.

It's true that some of the things that Rice undergraduates want to hold on to are difficult to defend. Obscenity, drinking and a sexually charged atmosphere are not traditionally considered the hallmarks of higher education. But John Stroup, professor of religious studies at Rice, contends that a sense of play is important at universities -- be it intellectual, athletic, social, even sexual. "What stimulates someone to become a great writer or painter or politician, for that matter?" he asks. "Risk takers may make the university famous….We could use a few more off-the-wall students, as far as I'm concerned." Stroup hopes that maintaining the playground model of higher education may keep American universities from turning into little more than corporate training grounds. "Rice needs courses, teachers and activities not as immediately defensible as training people in accounting or nanotechnology," he says. Rice needs things that are outside the bounds of business and law and purely in the realm of culture and experience.

Stroup points to recent controversies over the Rice student press as an example of corporate-style liability concerns stifling student rights and free speech on campus. In 1996 the Thresher published a column on its humor page titled "Rice Women Are Like…" The metaphors were juvenile and sexist ("Rice women are like … eggs: They only get laid once"), and the column led to a student-initiated forum on the problematic climate for women on campus. What was most troubling about the matter was that the Thresher uncovered a letter sent by administrators to the Student Association recommending that the association "override the editorial policy for the Thresher" in response to the column.

That spring Thresher editors published their yearly parody issue, the Trasher, in which they poked fun at a female student leader who had been profiled in Glamour magazine. According to the Trasher, a fictional female student, with a very similar name, had been profiled in Hustler magazine. Tasteless, yes. Defamation, no. But Rice administrators punished the editors for violating the school's very broad sexual harassment policy, the first time that policy had ever been applied to a student publication. One editor, a graduating senior, was given 100 hours of community service; the other was threatened with suspension until she wrote an administration-approved letter of apology. In the aftermath of the finding, two smaller satirical student papers ceased publication, and administrators appointed a student media adviser and an ad hoc committee to study the Thresher's relationship to the university.

KTRU, too, would soon be seen not just as a potential Rice asset but as a liability in the hands of the students.