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The Rice Thresher
Phone:
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by Rachel Rustin thresher staff
Cloots, now a Hanszen College sophomore, is taking a stand because she feels some of these cheers create a sexually harassing environment on campus. Along with Jones College senior Michelle Brand, Baker College senior Alexis Wiesenthal and Baker sophomore Kevin Duh, Cloots is in the process of filing a formal complaint with Vice President for Student Affairs Zenaido Camacho. After the complaint has been filed, Camacho said the likely first course of action would be to discuss the issue with the college masters. College cheers and counter cheers are intended to promote college spirit and superiority, primarily during Orientation Week and Beer-Bike. The complaint is not against all cheers or the idea of cheers in general. Instead, it deals specifically with cheers that could be considered degrading toward women and that may negatively affect the atmosphere of the campus. "In the context that we are using them, what are these words meaning?" Cloots said. "It's not the fact that they are bad words. It's like using sexual domination as anti-other colleges." For example, Cloots said expressions of college spirit that contain profanity, such as "Harry fuckin' Hanszen," are not offensive in the same way as cheers that set up sexual situations. These often include the person cheering in a dominant male position and the subject of the cheer being forced to submit to a sexual situation. Several cheers involve crude references to oral or anal sex. For example, one cheer used against Will Rice College is "Will Rice sucks my dick." "I feel like there is certain point when we do need the administration's guidance and we need their support, and that's all we're asking for," Cloots said. "We're not asking for their interference or anything." Brand, as well as Cloots and Duh, are participants in the Leadership Rice program, for which Brand wrote a paper posted on the Leadership Rice Web site stating her dislike for college cheers with sexual or sexist themes. "I believe such sexually explicit cheers give the impression that Rice students treat each other in such nasty and ugly ways; that Rice revolves around sexual language; and is sexually oriented," the paper states. Director of Leadership Rice Susan Lieberman encouraged Brand to take action about the situation, and said that she herself dislikes certain college cheers. "I think [the issue] is important because I love the idea of cheers, but I don't love the idea of these cheers," Lieberman said. "I'm embarrassed by them, and I'm embarrassed not by the words. I'm embarrassed by what they reflect of our values as a community. ... I understand that some students think that they reflect the values of free speech and independence and autonomy. I don't see them reflecting that." Brand, Duh, Cloots and Wiesenthal are in the process of writing a letter of formal complaint stating that they feel the college cheers break Rice's sexual harassment policy and create a hostile atmosphere on campus. They are unsure whether the letter, which will probably be sent next week, will contain other examples of behavior they say creates a negative environment on campus. Other issues that may possibly be included are college minutes, some of which contain "hook-up webs," sexually suggestive T-shirts such as the "Pet my Willy" shirts from last year's Willy Week, and sexually themed parties like Wiess College's Night of Decadence and the Hanszen Mardi Gras party, which has included a student stripping contest in recent years. Cloots, along with Hanszen sophomore Uchenna Agbim, protested the Mardi Gras party in an Oct. 27 Thresher letter to the editor. Rice's Peer Sexual Harassment policy states that any behavior that "has the effect of unreasonably offending ... may be harassment, even if there was no intent to offend." The policy also describes how conduct that is "severe, persistent or pervasive enough to either limit a student's ability to participate or ... to create a hostile or abusive educational environment" can be called hostile environment sexual harassment. The group of students will be setting up a table outside of Fondren Library Wednesday to collect signatures for the formal complaint. "If you sign it, you can either be saying you felt harassed or that you realize how it's a harassing atmosphere," Cloots said. The students involved in the formal complaint, including Duh, hope that people see the effort as one that is attempting to open up conversation of the issues. "I hope students will see this as a dialogue to having more diversity and being tolerant," Duh said. "People who are offended have to be tolerant of those who like it and vice versa." While cheers were designed to bring all the members of a college together, some feel that the harassing elements of these cheers may in fact alienate the very people they are supposed to include. Brand, an O-Week coordinator at Jones this year, said she convinced her fellow coordinators and advisers to not teach cheers containing obscenity as an official part of O-Week. "We're not going to say that if you are a part of Jones College, you have to say these words," Brand said. Next semester, the group will use funds from an Envision Grant to hold contests and give monetary prizes to encourage students within each college to develop new, positive cheers. Brand said she has high hopes for the creativity of Rice students and feels that the new cheers will be "just as creative, with the same impact" as the current cheers, "just not insulting other people." Student Association senators were asked to bring up the issue of the appropriateness of college cheers at their individual college government meetings, and those that met this past week had such discussions. The students filing the complaint said they know not all students will agree with them, but they hope their statement will prompt discussion and change. "We're not asking the administration to censor [cheers]," Cloots said. "We're asking them to acknowledge the fact that this can be a harassing environment for people. ... This is not an issue about censorship or free speech, but of this institutionalized thing that affects the O-Week climate. "The fact that it alienates students totally defeats the purpose of college spirit and setting a welcoming for freshmen and the kind of things that are acceptable and encouraged on the Rice campus."
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