COLUMN: Like all good things, Rice Univeristy will come to an end, but its spirit will endure on in the Rice Fun Park

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by Chris McKenzie

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IF HISTORY teaches us anything, it's that things change.

Nothing stays the same. Everything ends. Everything dies.

To us short-sighted humans, however, there are a lot of things that have been around so long that it's hard to imagine them ever dying off: the United States, the Catholic Church, Dick Clark.

Now add to that list good ole Rice University.

We live now in a society where a college education is not only accepted as a given good but also is increasingly essential for an individual to get anywhere.

It's difficult for us to imagine there ever not being a need for a university like Rice.

But now, really, can you imagine Rice U. being around in the year 3000? How about 13000?

I'm having enough trouble imagining years that begin with the number two, much less ones with five digits.

Ten thousand years ago, we were busy domesticating the dog. Ten thousand years from now, will Wiess College still be around (even after the renovation)?

I think not.

To allay any possible fears (or hopes), Rice University will not end any time soon.

You'll get your degree and your diploma, and you'll get to send your kids here without any obstacles, just like always.

But someday, way, way down the timeline, Rice will end.

When we're pompous alumni, with lots of money to endow, we won't like to think that, but it's egotistical to think that the monoliths we'll build with our names on them will last forever.

Now that I've depressed everyone with my fatalism, let's con- sider what the end of Rice will be like. Chances are that it won't be anything instantaneous and cataclysmic; trends in history rarely are.

But then again, maybe in the 25th century or so, the United States will be invaded by tribes of Canadian barbarians.

Perhaps, they'll sack and loot Rice, burning it to the ground and sending the scholars fleeing to community colleges.

More likely, however, universities will someday grow obsolete, and civilization will no longer have a use for them.

This is really difficult for us to imagine, given how important universities are to us now.

But to illustrate how the nature of universities has changed already, consider that students 800 years ago were expected to remain celibate and wake up before dawn.

As universities become more and more obsolete, less people will go to Rice. Not even the Board of Trustees of the distant future, with all its money and clout, will be able to save Rice from fading away.

Departments will close, then whole divisions.

Finally, what's the point? The university stops taking students and has its last graduation.

Twenty years later, the alumni finally lets the football squad close down.

The emptying campus meanwhile gets sold off to big money outside the hedges.

Mudd Lab becomes a Barnes and Noble.

The Shepherd School becomes a Wal-Mart. The Baker Institute, a Starbucks.

About a hundred years will pass with this commercialization of the former campus going on, until finally, the Daughters of Rice will get the Texas legislature (or whoever's in power six or seven centuries from now) to declare parts of the campus historical landmarks.

The only things left standing by then will be Willy's statue, the Rocks (which will have been eroded into smooth boulders) and Lovett College (whose insane construction will preserve it well past the end of mankind).

A museum will be built around the ruins of Fondren Library, with spooky-looking wax figures of students sitting reading books and walking to classes.

A floating hologram of a seated Willy will guide visitors through the museum saying much the same crap that the tour guides do now.

The only difference is that visitors of the future will see Rice University as a very strange and foreign thing.

Stories like the reversal of Willy's statue will take on mythic proportions.

Beer-Bike will seem like a bizarre tribal warfare ritual.

NOD and Club 13 will scare little children.

After a few decades of glory, the Rice museum will fade away as well.

Finally, some entrepreneur will come along and turn the place into a gigantic amusement park.

Roller coasters and ferris wheels will stand where we once studied.

The Batman DCCLXVI stunt show will play three times daily where we once slept.

The park's mascot will be none other than Sammy the Owl, and he'll bumble along in the park greeting visitors with his friends Biffy the Tuna and Charla the Sloth (God knows why).

Amusement parks are forever, and the Rice Fun Park will go on until the next ice age.

Perhaps this sounds a bit pessimistic to all you scholars out there, but just think, future generations will still get to go to Rice.

The difference is that they'll be eating cotton candy instead of CK.

Chris McKenzie is a Will Rice College senior.

This item appeared in the Opinion section of the March 15, 1996 issue.

Copyright © 1996 The Rice Thresher. All Rights Reserved.
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