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The Rice Thresher
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by Olivia Allison Thresher editorial staff
Coordinators at the meeting also agreed that each college will be allowed to have one decorative parade vehicle, either a decorated car or a float. The coordinators said they believe flatbed trailers, which would be low to the ground and pulled by small tractors, would solve the safety issues involved in the Beer-Bike parade. The wheels of these vehicles are much smaller and less dangerous than the wheels of the large trucks used in the recent past. "It's effectively like shrinking the flatbed of the cattle cars and reducing the cab of the truck to a trailer," Hanszen College Beer-Bike coordinator Laura Grable, a senior, said. Only about five students would ride on each of the flatbed trailers to pass out balloons, and these students would not be allowed to drink alcohol. The coordinators also propose to include a fence-like guard about the height of the large trucks' guards that could be added to the sides of the flatbed trailer to make the sides taller. This way, students could not easily fall out of the trailers or climb into them. Because of the number of injuries caused by water balloons in past years, coordinators also supported a plan to educate students, especially freshmen, about the dangers of the water balloon fight. The college coordinators would inform students that they should expect to be hit in the face with the water balloons and that the water balloons are often painful. Other college coordinators suggested telling students to fill the balloons completely and not to aim for other people's heads when they are throwing the balloons. Both university and college coordinators will continue to refine the details of the proposal, including finding businesses that rent tractors and flatbed trailers and the rental cost. University Beer-Bike coordinators Daniel Attaway, a Sid Richardson College senior, and Merritt McAlister, a Hanszen junior, will present the proposal at the next meeting of the college masters and presidents Nov. 29. The masters will then decide whether to accept the proposal. If the proposal is approved, masters will decide if any amendments to the plan are necessary, and the committee will recommend any changes to President Malcolm Gillis. The Beer-Bike coordinators will vote on the rules for Beer-Bike at the beginning of next semester, Attaway said. "The most important thing here is to realize that the college coordinators are the people that vote on the final rules and regulations of Beer-Bike, so they are the ones that technically have final say," he said. However, Attaway said, coordinators should not ignore the masters' safety concerns. "I don't know what would happen, but I don't think we can ignore the concerns of the university without repercussions," he said. This proposal followed more than a month of discussion about possible changes to the Beer-Bike parade among the coordinators, who were asked by the masters and presidents to devise a way to improve student safety at Beer-Bike. The masters' major concern is the large trucks each college rents for the parade, Will Rice College Master Dale Sawyer said. "The concern comes primarily out of wanting to improve the safety at Beer-Bike, and the biggest thing is the big rolling wheels," Sawyer, who chaired the Masters Committee last spring, said. "You have drivers who don't have visibility all around the truck and students doing things like darting in and out between the trucks." Sawyer added that other masters were also concerned about injuries from water balloons but said there was less of a consensus among the masters on this issue. "It's a concern that we all share, but I don't think most of us are concerned about balloons at the same level that we are about the trucks," Sawyer said. Twenty-three injuries were reported at last year's Beer-Bike, 13 of which were reported during the parade. Some of the injuries which were reported at the race actually occurred during the parade, however. The campus-wide coordinators, the college presidents and one college Beer-Bike coordinator from each college initially created a possible solution at an Oct. 18 meeting. The plan suggested that each college have one "decorative parade vehicle," or float, for the parade and two stations along the parade route for the storage and distribution of water balloons. This implied that the balloons would be stationary, and some college coordinators said they thought this separated the water balloon fight from the parade. "The more I think about it, after the water balloon fight if [students are] not already down by the stadium, they're just going to want to go back to bed or something," Baker College coordinator Nick Spicer, a senior, said. "You need to keep the parade and the water balloons together." Brown College coordinators, who felt the original proposal did separate the parade from the water balloon fight, created a second proposal. This proposal, rather than removing the large trucks altogether, called for more regulation of trucks in the parade. The new regulations included allowing only one truck per college, allowing 20 people to ride on the truck and having a form of traffic control to monitor students in danger of being hit by a truck. McAlister and Attaway presented both proposals to the Masters and Presidents Committee Nov. 2, and the committee requested that the college coordinators agree on one proposal before the next committee meeting Nov. 29. Masters Committee Chair Klaus Weissenberger said neither proposal adequately addressed the safety concerns. "The masters did not endorse either proposal, but rather were of the opinion that neither of the two proposals would fully allay their concerns," Weissenberger wrote in an e-mail message. College coordinators presented the original two proposals to their colleges at forums or at their cabinet meetings, requesting suggestions about how to improve the proposals. The coordinators discussed these suggestions at Wednesday's meeting. Many students at the forums said they were upset the coordinators had not discussed potential changes with the student body earlier. Coordinators said they were asked not to discuss the changes until a proposal had been created. Students in most colleges were opposed to separating the parade from the water balloon fight, college coordinators said at the Wednesday meeting. Some college coordinators said students did not oppose the removal of trucks from the parade as long as there would be an alternate way to transport balloons along the parade route. Hanszen students were particularly concerned that if the water balloon fight were separate from the parade, intoxicated students would drive on University or Rice boulevards to the Beer-Bike track, rather than walking the remainder of parade route, Grable said. In addition to increasing education about potential water balloon injuries, the coordinators at Wednesday's meeting said they would like to improve communication between masters and Beer-Bike coordinators. Many coordinators said they supported the idea of scheduling a campus-wide forum in which the masters could present their views and concerns to the student body. Director of Student Activities and Hanszen College Resident Associate Mona Hicks, who was also at Wednesday's meeting, agreed that a forum could be a positive event. She added that students in each college should begin by asking their masters personally where they stand on the Beer-Bike issues, and coordinators should discuss the new proposal with their masters. "I feel concerned because [masters] should be able to talk about their concerns with you," Hicks said. "It shouldn't be this big secret. You should make your master say, 'This is how I feel' - make them make a personal stance." McAlister felt the discussion at Wednesday's meeting was effective. "I felt that it was really productive," she said. "People are suddenly willing to cooperate on this issue. Everyone is in agreement."
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