Jacks during O-Week are to be carefully monitored

---

by Marty Beard

---

Jacks during Orientation Week will not be eliminated. Rather, they will be much more carefully monitored and planned.

The New Student Orientation Review Committee has released its 1996 Orientation Week Jack Policy, which reveals a consensus among O-Week coordinators that can be summed up as "same game, different rules."

Other changes in the policy include the fact that colleges can decide whether or not they want to participate in jacks during O-Week, and college chief justices will adjudicate if the coordinators cannot deal with the problems that occur.

One coordinator from each college must serve as jack coordinator. If any conflicts occur, then the jack coordinators from each college will meet to remedy the situation. All jacks must now be approved by the jack coordinators before they may be carried out.

College chief justices must be involved in the meetings of jack coordinators, but only justices from colleges not involved in the jack being discussed may vote. Penalties meted out by chief justices may include clean-up, restitution, individual or college fines, suspension of a college's jack privileges or removal of any non-freshman from campus for the remainder of O-Week.

Also, jacks will no longer be cleaned up by Food and Housing.

Past O-Week coordinators are divided about the issue. Jacks, some of them claim, involve advisers more than new students. While other coordinators do not attach the same severity to jacks, they said that jacks can hinder relationships between the colleges.

College masters hold varying opinions. The final decisive action to change the way jacks are handled must come from the students, most masters agreed.

According to Hanszen College Master Lisa Bryan, jacks can be harmful to Rice's custodial staff. One result of jacks is that custodians "get treated as if they were invisible. Jacks present the biggest problems for the people who must clean up," Bryan said.

Bryan said that she actually likes jacks "if they are funny, clever practical jokes that don't hurt anyone or destroy property," but stressed that her husband, Dennis Huston, also a master at Hanszen, is vehemently against jacks in any form.

In straw polls taken during cabinet meetings, Baker and Brown colleges expressed that they have experienced problems with O-Week jacks in the past, but want to keep jacks in some form.

The opinion at Hanszen is that building college unity is the purpose of jacks, and that jacks of late have not been very creative, and that the griefs of jacks did not overcome the benefits during O-Week 1995. The consensus at Sid Richardson College was that the ideal jack involves freshmen in the planning and action, and ends with the college cheer.

Jones College coordinators want to keep jacks, but admit that there are problems with them. "The majority of coordinators want to keep jacks in some form, but realize that some forms of jacks contribute nothing to the freshman experience," Jones O-Week Coordinator Robert Koslow said.

"Now colleges will have to be more creative in order to get other colleges' goats -- the way jacks used to be," Koslow said.

"Renegade advisers who act without consulting coordinators are usually the ones who are responsible for the more destructive jacks," Koslow said.

-- Chuck Whitten and Nicole Gerardo contributed to this story.

This item appeared in the News section of the May 17, 1996 issue.

Copyright © 1996 The Rice Thresher. All Rights Reserved.
This document may be distributed electronically, provided that it is distributed in its entirety and includes this notice. However, it cannot be reprinted without the express written permission of:
The Rice Thresher, Rice University, 6100 Main, Houston, TX 77005-1892, USA.