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The Rice Thresher
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Fitting the punishment to the crimeThe Oct. 24 Sid Richardson College Council minutes contained unacceptable sexually harassing personal attacks against members of the college. Former Sid Secretaries Patrick B. Murphy and Vinay Kini should be punished for writing them. But their actions do not exist in a vacuum. They live in an environment where such offensive attempts at humor have been encouraged and even expected to be a part of the college's minutes. There is clearly something wrong with this environment, and Sid must work swiftly to identify and fix its problems. However, Kini and Murphy should not be overly vilified for fulfilling the role their college elected them to fulfill. They have publicly apologized, and they admit that they made a mistake in writing these minutes. And these minutes - as admitted by Sid President Laura Rees, herself a former college secretary - exemplify the kinds of minutes the college's previous secretaries produced. So, without question, Kini and Murphy must be held responsible for their actions. But they should not be punished in a way that threatens their academic careers. In other words, they should not be suspended or expelled as a result of this case. Making an example of Murphy and Kini would in no way serve the Rice community or alleviate problems in the campus atmosphere for women, homosexuals or anyone else.
Maintaining decencyThe old "sticks and stones" adage does not apply to college cheers. Collectively shouting phrases that are sexually degrading and convey hostility toward women and homosexuals is damaging to the university community as a whole. Sure, you may not be thinking about the sex act when you and a hundred other voices shout that a rival college "sucks my dick." But the language of sexual power and domination is not something to be taken lightly. By institutionalizing this language, students make Rice seem like a hostile place to women and gay men. We establish an environment in these cheers in which power is being an aggressive male and being able to take sexual advantage of other men and women. Whether or not this is true, the appearance is so alienating that we cease to be the open community of ideas we claim to be. We are not calling for an end to college cheering - or even cursing in college cheers. We recognize a distinct difference between benignly obscene cheers ("Will fuckin' Rice") and cheers that make students extremely uncomfortable by including sexual scenarios and language. Students have the opportunity and the responsibility to make our environment welcoming. If the students don't do something to solve this problem, the university might do it for them, on its own terms. Students need to show the rest of the community that they can be responsible. We agree with the students who are taking the lead in this campus discussion. We hope that they will focus their argument on college cheers, to make a clear and direct statement about this issue. Colleges whose cheers are degrading should simply stop teaching them and come up with substitutes. Cheers should be witty, funny and maybe even tacky. They shouldn't be derogatory.
Learning to compromiseFor all the rumors and anger, it doesn't look like this year's Beer-Bike parade will be changing all that much. If the plan proposed by the student coordinators is approved by the masters, there will be fewer students riding in vehicles along the parade route, but the parade will still move, and students will still throw balloons at each other. It's true that there's never been an extremely serious injury as a result of the large trucks that the colleges have used for the last few years. But as a general rule, we support the idea that we should not wait for serious injury to make an event safer. We applaud the coordinators' plan and their willingness to make concessions for the sake of safety. Had they been stubborn and just said, "No, no, no," the administration might have acted without considering students' input at all. We call on the masters and presidents to approve this plan at their Nov. 29 meeting. The Beer-Bike coordinators have done their part in this compromise.
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