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The Rice Thresher
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Thresher Editorial Staff Protecting our campus They keep watch over the university all hours of the day, every day of the year, and even if you can't see them patrolling the area, the blue light phones are there to remind you that they're always on call. But because we're so accustomed to seeing them around, we tend to take our police officers for granted. So we want to say thank you to the members of the University Police Department -- especially in light of their recent efforts in tracking down the suspects of a long string of campus thefts. Thanks to their efforts, a large amount of stolen property --belonging to both students and the university -- has been recovered. This particularly high-profile case puts the spotlight on a lot of work that University Police do behind the scenes. The police department's mission encompasses much more than just patrolling and securing the campus. Their crime prevention programs, such as Operation Identification and Campus Watch, help deter crime, and when a crime does occur on campus, Rice police investigate. It's this hard work that helped the police nab their men, giving us more peace of mind and -- as former Rice President Kenneth Pitzer put it -- once again "making students safe for ideas."
Selling students' 'honors' Rice should stop participating in the Who's Who "honors program," a for-profit system that exploits students' desire to feel recognized. Randall Publishing Co. operates the program and publishes Who's Who Among Students in American Universities and Colleges as a commercial venture. It's a relatively low-cost money-maker: A committee at each school selects a number of nominees, and the company publishes profiles of the "winners" in the annual book. The search process and the profiles don't cost the company anything because the colleges and honorees volunteer the information. At Rice, the nominations are handled by the Awards Committee using processes outlined in the Student Association By-Laws. The company makes claims about how winners are not obliged to purchase the expensive book, a plaque or a silver key, but the system is designed to turn a profit from these vanity purchases. The award isn't taken seriously in the academic community because of the program's profit motives. The validity and worth of the Who's Who awards came up at an SA meeting two years ago. Students at the meeting discussed the issue, and the general feeling seemed to be negative. However, no action was taken, partly because the discussion came too late in the process of soliciting applicants. The SA should re-examine the so-called award and decide whether such a commercial venture is worth students' time and effort. As 1998-'99 SA President Bill Van Vooren said, "This undistinguished award is given to distinguished individuals. Sponsoring Who's Whoonly cheapens their accomplishments."
Taxation without notification
Although we agree that stalled elevators in the colleges inconvenience Food and Housing, which must arrange and pay for repairs, we disagree with the manner in which two students were threatened with a fine for allegedly causing an elevator to stall last week. We agree with F&H that levying a fine against people whose horseplay causes elevator malfunctions would be a good deterrent. However, this policy needs to be set and students need to be made aware of it before F&H can implement it, particularly because jumping around in an elevator may seem like harmless fun to some students. F&H should not slap two unlucky alleged offenders with a fine after one elevator malfunction too many, as the F&H business manager implied he might do in an e-mail to two students who were stuck in a Sid Richardson College elevator for about two hours Saturday night. In this particular case, there is disagreement over whether one or both students were even jumping in the elevator, let alone creating enough force to cause it to stop. If F&H decides to implement a policy of fining elevator offenders, this case underscores the need to carefully judge each incident. After all, to wrongly fine a student trapped in an elevator stalled through no fault of his own would be adding insult to injury.
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