Jacks may be banned next year

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by Peggy Lai

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There could be a one-year hiatus on Orientation Week jacks if the final version of a report by the Orientation Week Review Committee is approved by Vice President for Student Affairs Zenaido Camacho.

The final report, co-authored by committee chairs Hanszen College President Glenn Levy and Student Center Director Steve Sutton, was submitted to Camacho on Tuesday.

Camacho said that he would not make a decision about the report until he has discussed the issue of jacks with the college masters and next year's O-Week coordinators.

A meeting of the college masters was scheduled for Wednesday night. On the agenda was a discussion about jacks.

Also, section 15.2 of the final report said, "The group of new Coordinators will address the issue of jacks at the Coordinator retreat. If they decide to reconsider the recommendation of this report, they will be asked to come up with a policy which addresses issues including: student fatigue; wasted resources and time; destruction of property; jack adjudication; the stress of dealing with jacks on a daily basis; students who feel uncomfortable/alienated by jacks; and the difficulties of creating guidelines which will actually be adhered to. Their policy will be sent to Dr. Camacho for approval."

The coordinator retreat will take place March 22-24.

"The bottom line is that the decision of all this is not going to be made for a while," Camacho said.

In reply to the 13-page response written by Sid Richardson College O-Week coordinator Stephen Gallagher and SRC advisor Dan Newman, Levy said that it "was constructive and had some good ideas."

However, Levy said the petition circulated by Gallagher and Newman on Jan. 23 and 24 did indicate that, in concordance with section 15.1 of the report, most of the O-Week coordinators agreed with the elimination of jacks for a year.

"Six [coordinators] signed the petition in opposition to completely removing jacks from O-Week. Another 10 supported the report's recommendation of a one-year hiatus from jacks so long as next year's coordinators have the chance to address the issue again if they see fit. Five others [who were not reached by Steve and Dan] were in favor of removing jacks from next year's O-Week," Levy said.

Addressing concerns that freshmen will complain if jacks are eliminated next year, Levy said, "At this point there are students who feel it is unfair to have jacks -- they feel that jacks are immature, uncreative and destructive. Is it fair to these students to alienate them? I think that next year's freshman class will have a stellar O-Week regardless of any changes which are made. It will only be `unfair' if advisors and other upperclassmen convince them [that] they're missing something.

"It would be unfortunate if students do not talk about the other issues [next to jacks] in the proposal. Specifically, the O-Week 2000 section contains some radically different plans for part of the week. I would hope that students would read about this and give their input to masters, presidents, me, coordinators and Dr. Camacho."

A copy of the proposal is available on the Internet at the following address: http://www.owlnet.rice.edu/ ~glenno/review.html

This item appeared in the News section of the February 2, 1996 issue.

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