VOLUME 107, ISSUE NO. 21 | STUDENT-RUN SINCE 1916 | RICETHRESHER.ORG | WEDNESDAY, MARCH 8, 2023
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‘A significant milestone’:
Women carve out spaces at Rice MORGAN GAGE
EDITOR-IN-CHIEF
When the then-Rice Institute welcomed its first matriculating class, Nellie Mills was among its ranks. Mills, the first woman to matriculate at Rice, was one of the few women attending Rice in its early days. While students were largely male, Rice was established as a coeducational institution, admitting both male and female students from its inception — though admission was restricted to white Texas residents. It was the summer of 1929, three years after the first Rice doctoral degree was granted, when the Houston Chronicle announced that Rice had awarded its first Ph.D. to a woman: May Hickey. Hickey was a remarkable student beyond the degrees she earned. From Rice alone, she earned her bachelor’s degree, a masters in mathematics and physics and, later, her Ph.D. in mathematics.
“This is the best application ever sent out from this school,” Hickey’s high school principal wrote as part of her undergraduate application. “I predict that May Hickey will establish a record at Rice Institute.” He was right. Hickey had a transcript of almost entirely 1’s — the highest grade offered at the time, in an age before grade inflation when that grade was notoriously difficult to achieve. As an undergraduate student, she was a teaching assistant in the math, English and German departments. Two years in a row, she was awarded the Graham Baker Award for best student at Rice. She went on to teach undergraduates mathematics and physics while earning her master’s and Ph.D. Despite their academic success, women still faced a number of social restrictions. According to Edna Otuomagie’s online exhibit exploring the decisions Rice made concerning gender, sex and race between
1957 and 1970, freshmen girls were required to wear formal clothing, such as the pinafore dress, in public spaces. For the first part of Rice’s history, women were not offered on-campus housing and were required to leave campus by 5 p.m. until the establishment of residential colleges in 1957, when Jones College, the first women’s residential college and oncampus housing, was established. “In 1954, President William Houston convened the Committee on Student Housing ‘to study the student housing problem, decide if a residential college system would be feasible, and if so … plan that system.’” Otuomagie wrote. “On this council of 19 people sat only four women at one time … These women, with the help of trustee J. Newton Rayzor, pushed for oncampus living arrangements for the female students.”
SEE WOMEN PAGE 6
GUILLIAN PAGUILA / THRESHER
COURTESY CAMPANILE
After Title IX: Looking back at early women’s sports at Rice they finally started serving sandwiches for lunch, and we would sneak them out so we FEATURES EDITOR could get something for dinner.” Five years earlier, Title IX was passed, In 1977, one of the most smuggled goods at Rice was sandwiches. The perpetrators prohibiting discrimination in educational were the women’s volleyball team, forced programs and thereby giving women equal to sneak food out of the serveries to resources and opportunities in athletics. accommodate for their practice time at the This change was not instantaneous, gym, which overlapped with dinner times. though. Savitsky said that strides toward Neither Rice nor the athletics department closing the gender gap in athletics was a had made any mealtime provisions for slow process, happening over the course of many years. female athletes at “Some of the the time, according people who were to Helen Travis seniors when I Savitsky (’80), was a freshman who was on the The only thing that made had volleyball, volleyball and the women’s program but it was a club swim teams during intercollegiate was the sport. It wasn’t her time at Rice. an intercollegiate “There was fact that we were playing sport. And it always competition other people. It was really changed from being for time in the gym glorified intramurals. a club sport to an … The only time intercollegiate sport that we could get James Disch … right as I came access to it was FORMER RICE WOMEN’S in,” Savitsky said. during dinner,” VOLLEYBALL & BASKETBALL “So even though Savitsky said. “At COACH Title IX had passed, that time, dinner was a seated meal that went from time A to Rice didn’t just jump on board in 1972.” Before Title IX had fully taken effect, time B. There was no other place to go get something to eat. In my sophomore year, the starkest disparity between male and
RIYA MISRA
female athletics at Rice was the sheer lack of resources allotted to the latter. It didn’t stop at smuggled sandwiches. According to Savitsky, funding for equipment and transportation for female athletics was little-to-nonexistent. “We played other schools in Texas,” Savitsky said. “We got there in passenger vans. We didn’t fly anywhere, [it] didn’t matter how long the drive was. We stayed four [people] to a room in hotels that you wouldn’t set foot in today. We ate at places where I wouldn’t even stop to get a glass of water. I mean, there was no money.” This wasn’t the case for male athletics, where plenty of funding already existed. James Disch, the former coach for intercollegiate women’s volleyball and basketball teams, said that funding for men’s team cemented them as a fully functioning program. The same couldn’t be said for the women’s team, though. “The men’s program was fully funded. There [were] scholarships, there were paid coaches. It was a program,” Disch said. “The only thing that made the women’s program intercollegiate was the fact that we were playing other people. It was really glorified intramurals.”
SEE TITLE IX PAGE 11
CELEBRATING INTERNATIONAL WOMEN’S DAY
IMAGES COURTESY RICE UNIVERSITY
“Top Chef” finalist Evelyn Garcia talks KIN, college and her grandparents’ cheese MICHELLE GACHELIN
A&E EDITOR
Growing up, Evelyn Garcia was surrounded by two things: family and food. Now, the “Top Chef: Houston” finalist serves her grandparents’ Salvadoran cheese at Jūn, her brand-new restaurant, in hopes of uniting customers through food. Garcia’s career began at home, long before earning her white coat and professional accolades. As a firstgeneration Latin American, she said that her family worked on many different projects, including running their own cleaning company and later, their own restaurant. Instead of a chore, she said that cooking was always something she loved to do. “Just very traditionally, it kind of falls on the oldest one to help more [and] be more responsible,” Garcia said. “Knowing that my parents would have crazy hours, I would help out and make sure that my siblings had lunch for them when they came to school, or if they needed to pack anything, I took on that responsibility … Food [was] always very much engraved in our every day.”
You definitely have to cook food that speaks to you and what you believe. It has to be aligned with what you do, because cooking is an art form. Evelyn Garcia “TOP CHEF” FINALIST, JŪN CO-OWNER
Garcia said she was always inclined toward the culinary arts, and took up other creative pursuits like art, dance and theatre at Cypress Ridge High School. After she graduated, she moved to New York to attend the Culinary Institute of America, the “Harvard of culinary” and the only school she applied to. “I went there with the mentality of, ‘Oh my god, I’m just so excited, I’m here to learn, I’m gonna take it all in,’” Garcia said. “And really be grateful for the possibility that I could even go to culinary school, because it was very expensive … I’m the oldest of my family, so [being] the first one leaving the home and going through the process, and then leaving the state … it was a little scary, but the excitement was way bigger than that.”
SEE EVELYN GARCIA PAGE 9