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The Rice Thresher
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by Mark Berenson Thresher staff Funding for the George R. Brown Forensics Society to take buses to tournaments next year has not yet been secured. The debate team received an additional $20,000 to travel by bus this year after the van accident last March that killed Baker College freshman Dan Henning and injured several other members of the team. Debate coach Dan West said the team will not travel by van to faraway competitions and will not attend them if the team runs out of funding for buses. Budget Director Kathy Collins said the $20,000 increase in the debate team budget was requested by Student Affairs as part of the standard budget development process. West said in early October, he was told by Assistant Dean of Student Affairs for Student Life Cathi Clack that the budget increase was for this year only and that it was unclear if the debate team would be getting it in subsequent years. West had requested a permanent increase. West said he was caught off guard. "I was blindsided by that comment. They told Cathi as if I knew. I had never been told that at all," West said. Clack added that West is concerned because the parents of debaters had been concerned that their children might travel in vans. No decision was made last summer regarding a permanent increase in the Forensic Society's transportation budget, Assistant Vice President for Student Affairs John Hutchinson said. Vice President for Student Affairs Zenaido Camacho and Associate General Counsel Carlos Garcia told West in September that the basis for not providing additional travel funds is that there needs to be an equity of liability for the university, West said. Hutchinson would not confirm that the conversation had taken place, but said equity of liability was a reasonable concern that had been discussed by the administration. Camacho had no recollection of the conversation and Garcia was unavailable for comment, as he is currently on vacation. In a letter sent to the Rice forensics community, West explained equity of liability. "If we give Forensics money to travel by bus, and we don't give other teams like Lacrosse money to travel by bus, and Lacrosse gets into an accident in a van, then we would be more liable than if we made Forensics travel in vans, too," West wrote. Hutchinson said the concept of equity of liability would not apply if the decision to provide different transportation arrangements was not based on safety. "If there were time pressure concerns, numbers of personnel which could effect the mode of transportation, and the economies associated with it - there could be other factors," he said. In addition, Hutchinson said the issue of equity of liability would not be relevant this year, since the decision to give additional funds to the debate team was not based on safety. "[The team was] not provided funds because there was a concern on the part of the university that vans are unsafe, but rather it was in support of a team which had suffered a serious, traumatic and obviously extremely injurious accident," Hutchinson said. However, Associate General Counsel Joe Davidson said he would not have used equity of liability to explain this situation. "I would not have used that phrase in that context," Davidson said. Davidson added that no single standard is right for all groups, and that the larger situation must be examined. "There isn't a hierarchy to vehicles ," Davidson said. "All modes of transportation are acceptable under certain circumstances." Risk Manager Renee Block agreed that transportation needs to be dealt with as each situation arises. "You can't really have a one-size-fits-all - you need to look at each situation separately, because each situation is different," Block said. West said the main reason he wanted to continue traveling by bus was because of safety. "Vans aren't as safe as buses," he said. West said a bus is safer because it has a lower center of gravity than a car, meaning that it will not tip over. Also, buses are taller, so in a crash similar to last year's the cabin of the bus would not have been deformed. "Mostly, what would have happened is that we would have been thrown around in the bus, and someone would have broken an arm or a leg," West said. In addition, the safety issue is compounded by the large size of the team. "Because of our success last year, our team is large enough that we can't actually fit in two vans, so [assistant coach] Chris [Aspdal] and I drive two vans if we drive and we have more students than that, so we don't have anybody to drive a third van," West said. According to West, the debate team goes to about 11 tournaments that are several hours away or more. The rest of the tournaments are close enough that West said he has continued to use vans to get to them. For example, in early November, the team took a van to the Texas Intercollegiate Forensics Association State Championship, which was took place at North Harris College in Humble, about 40 minutes from Rice. West said he has tried to keep the costs down when traveling by bus. West obtained a commercial driver's license this summer, meaning that he can drive a rented bus, which he has done this semester. Last week West sent out a letter about the lack of funding for bus travel next year, addressing it to "Students, Alumni and Friends of Rice Forensics." The letter called for people to support the additional funding by writing letters to members of the administration. West's decision to send the letter was to keep the community, and especially parents, aware that the team may lose funding for the buses. "[West] goes, 'I'm going to have to keep parents informed about our travel status so I have to let them know that there's a probability we'll have to go back to being in vans again.' I don't have a problem with that," Clack said. However, according to West, the administration was upset with his approach to dealing with the situation and told him a letter to the public was not appropriate. West said he stands by the writing of his letter. Hutchinson had no comment about the letter. Debate team member Timothy Werner, who sustained minor injuries in the accident last year, said the only reason many parents of returning debaters allowed them to complete this year was because they believed the team would receive additional money for transportation. "To say the very least, we were astonished and incredibly upset when we heard that the money was only for one year," Werner, a Brown College senior, said. Werner added that he feels it is unfair that the university is burdening the debate team with uncertainty. "For those of us who've returned, we already have the burden of doing well, then we have the burden of dealing with the past, so the last thing we really need is to have to face what the university is trying to do to us," Werner said. West said that the team will not go back to traveling by van in the future. "I'll continue to travel by buses, and if we run out of money, then no more nationals," he said. "It's not worth it for me to sacrifice the success of our program or the safety of my students. I won't do it again. I have a family that I love, and I'm not going to risk my life on the road in a van again for the university, and I hope they understand where I am coming from." Debate team captain Brook Ames, a Hanszen College junior who was severely injured in last semester's accident and had to have a titanium rod inserted into his femur, supports West's refusal to return to vans for long trips. "For a lot of us, especially the upperclassmen, it's really hard to think about riding in vans again," he said. "For those long drives, it really makes me nervous, having been through that," Ames said.
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