EDITORIAL: O-WEEK
The elimination of jacks is quite frankly akin to eliminating the college system itself. Jacks are a personality trait of this university and its students. But if the O-Week Steering Committee's proposal is rubberstamped by Vice President for Student Affairs Zenaido Camacho, jacks will be the first thing to be banned from O-Week activities.
Amazingly enough, the people behind this decision are letting history repeat itself, something that we have been taught to never let happen. Throughout the 84 years that this university has been in existence, Rice students have been driven to the breaking point by academic pressure. The result has all too commonly been suicide. To combat this, the university has allowed the students to be creative and enjoy themselves in acts which would otherwise be called derisive. From the Slime Parade to Hell Week to Club 13 to O-Week, Rice students have managed their stress through practical jokes starting the very first day they arrive and continuing through the very last day they leave. Texas Monthly Editor Greg Curtis recounted a rather humorous anecdote from 1964, in a recent issue of Texas Monthly , where he and his fellow prankster students sent out letters requesting urine samples at the student health center.
These and other stories are what form the very fabric that is Rice. Without jacks being instilled into the freshmen during O-Week, the university will not only lose a valuable tradition, but O-Week will become just another stuffed shirt convention. As has been learned from war, it is adversity that bonds humans together. A stuffed shirt convention will not produce the same bonding between students. Creativity will lag. Students will lose a special aspect of their personality. The end result might very well be more suicides.
Of course, the main argument against jacks seems to be that they have become acts of vandalism. In the same breath, we have heard proponents of this plan cite the 1988 statue-turning triumph as a true example of a true jack. We hate to point out the obvious, but the statue-turning incident was an act of vandalism, costing the university a considerably higher sum than the costs associated with cleaning up all the jacks in the past five years combined. On the other hand, using it as an argument against jacks because they are acts of vandalism is groundless.
When Camacho considers whether the O-Week Steering Committee's proposal should be approved, he should understand that jacks are an integral part of the character and make-up of Rice University.
Besides, signing a document that would eliminate jacks would not bring about the desired results. As any parent knows, saying "no" to a child only makes that child want to do exactly what the parent said not to. A case in point is the O-Week matriculation incident. Let's face it, O-Week is a time when we are all just kids. Ultimately, the responsibility of performing safe jacks falls in the hands of the coordinators and the student body. We certainly do agree that it is time for a change, but eliminating jacks from the O-Week slate of activities is an insult to Rice University and the students who attend it, especially without their consent.
This item appeared in the Opinion section of the January 26, 1996 issue.
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