EDITORIAL: HYPOCRISY
"Oh to be an American Owl ..."
Apparently the O-Week coordinators, partly because of pressure from higher ups, have decided that the students in the Class of 1999 are not entitled to one of the very basic tenants in the United States Constitution: freedom of speech. Jones College was fined $135 for chanting "Jones Wins Again" three times during the matriculation ceremony. The coordinators had agreed that the colleges would not chant at matriculation so that the ceremony would be more dignified. Apparently, the faculty/administration threatened to walk away from the ceremony if chants and jacks were too disruptive this year. This incident points toward two serious problems at Rice: the faculty's lack of understanding and willingness to accept the changing landscape that is Rice tradition and the double standards of O-Week.
In case the faculty and coordinators forgot, the faces on the Sallyport, second only to Willy's Statue as a symbol of this university, start with the jovial face of the freshman and end with the serious face of the senior.
In the spirit of this pivotal piece of architecture, O-Week has always been an extremely fun time while Commencement yields to a little more decorum.
Yet, the faculty and coordinators have suddenly decided to single out matriculation as some bastion of dignity where the jovial freshman is expected to be a serious senior for a moment.
How exactly do you create a week of jacks, pranks and chants while expecting the students to sit down, shut up and be serious about sitting in the humidity hearing speeches they won't remember tomorrow or four years down the road?
Besides, the true symbolism of matriculation has nothing to do with the speeches; it has to do with the community and spirit that is imbued into every Rice freshman during O-Week. Matriculation is the start of a difficult journey which all freshman take on the road to graduation.
Only when a Rice student walks through the Sallyport after graduation does the matriculation ceremony become salient. Only then does the act of walking through the Sallyport take on a special significance.
We are in no way blaming any single individual. In fact all of the individuals involved in this incident are respectable people, but something has gone seriously wrong at this university. People are creating double standards and allowing individual colleges to take the blame for a systemwide failure as Jones did for matriculation. (Hmm ... sounds familiar ... Southern Methodist University, NCAA Death Penalty. Will we ever learn from history and our mistakes?)
Is it any wonder why everyone likes Wiess Master John Hutchinson so much? He understands the student perspective at Rice and wastes little time defining that perspective and warning people of its boundaries, but he does not encroach on those boundaries.
During Hutchinson's speech, Hutchinson talked about college students' "irreverence towards traditions and institutions, towards everything that is pretentious or hypocritical. Students in college, and at Rice in particular, will find fault in most anything and will find very creative ways to laugh at it. Personally, I really like this."
Sounds like he is talking about the matriculation ceremony -- a ceremony that is so pretentious that students for years have streaked and pranked the ceremony in jest and in the spirit of O-Week, a spirit established almost hand in hand with the establishment of the College System.
This incident marks the first time in recent memory that someone has been punished for speaking out at an assembly at Rice. If we're not mistaken, every college chanted at the faculty address on Sunday. In fact, Hutchinson commented right after completing his speech that the chanting had fired him up.
At last year's matriculation, Dr. Camacho stood back while students were chanting and said, "This is great."
While the clapping and chanting by Jones College was rude and insensitive to the speakers, the coordinators had no right to fine the college for its actions even if a verbal agreement had been made. Why? The agreement violates freedom of speech and represents a fundamental breakdown at Rice.
Besides, the coordinators and O-Week in general have broken down into a bunch of double standards. One college jacks another before the deadline, the jacked college whines and wants the other college fined, the jacked college retaliates before the jack deadline and is horrified to find that the other coordinators want to fine them. The cycle continues. When will people open their eyes to the fact that you cannot single out one event that is "jack-free" or impose a "jack" deadline because these in themselves are places where students can be irreverent?
You can't say that "respectful clapping is allowed at matriculation" and then not expect a college like Jones to be "reverent" and rebel against a stupid agreement by being creative. It's all or nothing and "all" seems to have won. Moderation was thrown out the window from the beginning. Matriculation should not govern student spirit and creativity. If anything, the students should govern matriculation. After all, the ceremony is for them, not the faculty.
While the people all tell you that Rice is a place to expand you mind and learn about yourself, their actions are saying something different, "Welcome to Hypocrisy University. You have no rights. We will stifle any attempt at creativity."
(Let's see, we said that ... Jones was fined $135 which breaks down to $15 a word ... 15 words at $15 a word ...)
This item appeared in the Opinion section of the August 25, 1995 issue.
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