The Doctor is In

Doc C Nurtures Rice Students for 40 Years as Resident Associate

Gilbert Cuthbertson, known affectionately as “Doc C,” has set a record at Rice that few will ever dare break.

This year the political science professor became the only person to endure 40 years as a resident associate—a feat some consider beyond human capabilities. “I think it is miraculous,” says Zenaido Camacho, former vice president for student affairs. “Some people after a few years say ‘whoa’ and move on. But students love him, and he has done a great job. It’s a real tribute to him that he has done it that long.”

Last spring during Beer Bike week, Doc C received a well-deserved tribute as about 200 students and alumni gathered to honor him at Will Rice College.

His admirers prepared a crawfish boil, cookies, and refreshments and handed Doc C a “Thanks for the Memories” book replete with humorous and moving letters. They also chose the Beer Bike theme in his honor and made a maroon-colored T-shirt emblazoned with an image of a lemon and the words: “Doc C’s Hard Lemon, Beer Bike 2004, 40 years of Doc C’s Excellence.”

The biggest present, however, was the dedication of the Will Rice game room to him. The room includes a lasting tribute to Doc C’s legacy at the residential college: a mural painted on one of the game room walls that depicts Doc C and longtime Will Rice College coordinator Babs Willis sitting together on a bench in the college patio. “Little” Bobby Duncan ’71 painted it and, in his dedication, thanked the two for having “done so much for all of us.”

“Students have been driving me up a wall for 40 years,” Doc C jokes, “and now one of our alumni has decided to paint a mural and put me up on the wall.”

But even without his picture on the wall, Doc C would be a permanent part of the myth of Will Rice. “He is an institution,” says Will Rice College Master Traci Wolfe. “He is the college.”

In many ways, Doc C is the father of Will Rice. The college was in its infancy—only seven years old—when Doc C became a resident associate in 1964. He played a big role in nurturing Will Rice’s growth, personality, and tradition. Doc C came to Rice University in 1963 after receiving his PhD in political science from Harvard University, but his decision to work at Rice had been made in his senior year at the University of Kansas. He was at a student conference for national affairs when he met Rice philosophy professor Radoslav Tsanoff. “I was so impressed with Dr. Tsanoff’s intellectual ability that I wanted to come to Rice after I graduated from Harvard,” says the 67-year-old Doc C. “Dr. Tsanoff has always been a model for me.”

When Doc C arrived at Rice, there were only six colleges: Wiess, Baker, Hanszen, Jones, Brown, and Will Rice. The campus had so many open spaces that students could hear the lions roar from the Houston Zoo in Hermann Park. Students, however, had to suffer the Houston heat because the colleges didn’t have air conditioning or refrigerators. What’s more, liquor wasn’t allowed in the colleges at the time, and women were not allowed in the men’s colleges and vice versa. “Therefore, the problem was how to keep people from living off campus, which is quite different from today,” Doc C says.

He decided to become a resident associate after having dinner one night at Will Rice. Students wanted to know what kind of questions might be on his final exam the next day and gathered around the table to probe his mind. After some discussion, the group came up with questions that captured the essence of the class, and some of those questions did appear on the test. The students were so grateful that they invited Doc C to become part of the college. “I was the man who came to dinner, and I quickly stayed—or overstayed, as the case may be,” Doc C says.

He remained because he wanted to make a difference in students’ lives. “I feel the colleges are closely connected with the teaching and academic process. I think that my effectiveness as an educator has been developed through the close participation with the students in the college,” he says. “It gives you an opportunity to develop an awareness of student attitude toward both campus and national issues.”

The college system, Doc C continues, has a transforming effect on the students. “You come into the college, and you are not the same after you have left. It is an intellectual experience, a social experience, but also a mythological or spiritual experience. It is like going out the Sallyport into the world beyond the hedges at commencement. There is a change.”

Will Rice especially encourages students to think independently, according to Doc C. While other colleges might have more formal rules, Will Rice cultivates a laissez-faire environment. “We are the college of individuals, or even the college of revolutionaries, because we have relatively few formal rules for conduct and procedure.”

Looking ever-so young, the new resident associate often was mistaken for an undergraduate. Bob Vanzant ’70 remembers the first time he saw Doc C. The professor was playing bridge with a group of students, and Vanzant wondered who this “young student” was and why he was called “Doc.” On the last day of freshman week, Doc C could not be found, and students feared that he would miss the matriculation address. “Imagine our surprise when we spotted whom we had assumed to be just another freshman, sitting on the stage in his Crimson Harvard regalia, among the other department chairs.”

In his four decades at Will Rice, Doc C has lived in only two rooms. He resided on the fourth floor for a few years, but moved when students decided to convert the sundeck into a swimming pool by blocking the drain. “When water from the blocked drain leaked into my room, I decided to move down one flight to save the stairs and not have to worry about swimming pools, sundecks, or leakage, not to mention the noise.”

Doc C is hard of hearing, but there are many pranks that have caught his ears. “I remember back in the ’60s” he says, “when Fidel Castro was threatening to bomb a coastal city, and I woke up in the middle of the night and students were playing a World War II bombing record full blast up on the sundeck, simulating a bombing raid.”

Another prank that would have landed some students in serious trouble had Doc C not intervened was the UFO incident. During the Cold War there were many UFO sightings, and eight Will Rice students decided to add to the mystery. They built a flying contraption out of black weather balloons filled with hydrogen and attached them to a bamboo frame wrapped in aluminum foil and illuminated by six bright-red railroad flares. The “UFO” lifted off from the stadium, and the wind carried it right over the Southwest Freeway, prompting the media to report the prank. A picture of the perpetrators appeared on the front page of the Houston Post Sunday edition.

The Federal Aviation Administration wasn’t too happy about the incident and wanted to talk to the students. Doc C heard about it and told the dean of undergraduate affairs, who offered the students help from Rice lawyers. After questioning one of the students, the FAA decided the balloon UFO did not pose any danger. “I did not find out about Doc C’s role in my rescue for years,” says Bob Vanzant. “He wanted no glory, but he would fight a bear for his boys.”

While pranks are things of legend at Rice, another lore has it that no one has ever entered Doc C’s room in Will Rice. One student, however, did manage to covertly enter the sacred chamber via an attic tunnel. “I was asleep at 2 am when this disembodied hand reached out from the wall and awakened me,” Doc C says. “It was a student, and he said, ‘Hi, Doc, how are you doing?’ And I said, ‘Hi,’ back.”
Living at Will Rice, Doc C says, is somewhere between a continuing family and a soap opera. “I don’t need television entertainment—we always have something going on. But it is a family.”

And like an elder family member who spins a yarn about friends and relatives from his youth, Doc C can tell a story about almost every student who has graced the halls of Will Rice. Babs Willis, who was Will Rice College coordinator for 32 years, says, “He knows so many people. He remembers everything. He remembers everybody’s story, their names and faces and where they are from, and the good and the bad things they did while they were here.”

Doc C also remembers the good and the bad from beyond the hedges. For years, he has taken students to Europe, Central America, Mexico, New Mexico, and New Orleans for Mardi Gras. He pays for their airfare, hotel, and rental car. “Again, this is a family,” he says. “I suppose they need financing for the trip, and I need supervision. And besides, it is a lot of fun.”

Matthew Haynie ’03 traveled to Scotland, England, New Mexico, and Arizona with Doc C. The trips, he says, were extremely informative, adventurous, and entertaining. “He knows everything about these places. Whenever we go, it is one long history lesson. Doc C has an endless supply of knowledge about anywhere we go.”

Rice students also get to travel abroad through the volunteer work of Doc C, who serves on the River Oaks Rotary Club’s scholarship committee. “I am certainly not going to claim that there is any direct relationship between the number of Rice students who have received those awards and my position on the board,” Doc C quips.

In addition to loving to travel, Doc C has a passion for collecting antiques and books, and he can get very competitive in his search for the unique. Robert F. Weisberg ’71 recalls a book sale held by the Veteran’s Hospital in which people lined up at 8 am to buy items for a quarter. Doc C was in front of the line, and when only the top half of the Dutch door opened, he dove over the lower half and ran desperately to get his hands on Hollinshead’s Chronicles, published in 1577 and believed to be the source for many of Shakespeare’s historical plays. “Needless to say,” Weisberg chuckles, “Doc C got his antique book for 25 cents.”

Over the years, Doc C has bought more than 5,000 books and has placed most of them in his office at James A. Baker III Hall. Books cover his office walls from floor to ceiling and run over almost every inch of floor space, leaving only a narrow trail to his desk. One recent visitor to his office mistook the room for storage, but was reassured by the department secretary that this was Doc C’s office. The visitor promptly returned to the office and asked, “Is anyone home?” When there was no reply, he waited for several minutes, observing the pile of books. Suddenly, Doc C, who hadn’t heard his visitor, popped up from the heap of tomes, his head barely visible, and said, “Oh, there you are.” The guest was so startled, he could hardly utter a word.

Having served four decades as a resident associate and under every master of Will Rice, Doc C has gotten to know several thousand students, and almost all of them remember him fondly.

He can’t seem to get away from them—including in the operating room. Not long ago, Doc C was having a cataract operation and everyone in the room had been a Will Rice resident. The last thing he remembers before he went under the knife was the anesthesiologist telling him, “I liked most of your lectures, but a few did put me to sleep. Now it’s my turn to put you to sleep.”

Many alumni are beginning to call him Grandpa Doc, and some of their children now live at Will Rice. Doc C admonishes the alumni children much the same way he did their parents. “I tell them, ‘Well, John, you are making the same mistake as your father made 30 years ago.’” It is this continuity, Doc C says, that contributes to the Will Rice myth.
And Doc C will continue building on the myth, for he has no plans to retire soon as a resident associate.

“Since this is a continuing challenge and, of course, I have a new group of individuals to deal with every year, I like to rise to that challenge and contribute the best I have to offer and help those students as much as I can in surviving the Rice experience.”

—David D. Medina