VOLUME 108, ISSUE NO. 3 | STUDENT-RUN SINCE 1916 | RICETHRESHER.ORG | WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 6, 2023
PHOTO CALI LIU / THRESHER ILLUSTRATION ALICE SUN / THRESHER
Rice Pride extends honorary membership to Texas public university students HADLEY MEDLOCK
A&E EDITOR
As Texas closes the doors of queer resource centers at public universities across the state, Rice Pride is opening theirs. On June 14, Gov. Greg Abbott signed a law banning diversity, equity and inclusion offices and initiatives at state-funded universities in Texas, as well as the hiring or assignment of an employee to conduct DEI office duties. Despite the law not officially going into effect until January 2024, the University of Houston has already disbanded their Center for Diversity and Inclusion, as well as the school’s LGBTQ Resource Center. After hearing about UH’s center closing down, Rice Pride’s executive board released a statement saying they were planning to extend honorary membership to students at public universities in Texas, allowing them to utilize resources and find community within Rice’s Queer Resource Center. Cole Holladay, a co-president of Rice
Pride, said that discussions surrounding what their organization could do to support university students affected by Bill 17 began as soon as the law was introduced. While reviewing Rice Pride’s constitution to reapply as a student organization for this semester, they found their solution. “After a really close reading, we found a clause that talked about how we could extend honorary membership to people from the community, or grad students and other people, which was not something that we had really seen before,” Holladay, a Martel College junior, said. “But because it was already in our Constitution and had been approved before, we were like, ‘Okay, there’s infrastructure, this is something we could do.’” Though originally intimidated by joining Rice Pride, Holladay said they found encouragement from Orientation Week parents that encouraged them to start visiting the QRC freshman year. They now see the QRC as a space vital to LGBTQ+ community building and said that
extending this community just felt like the right thing to do. “The Senate Bill that we’re seeing and a lot of other legislation we’re seeing coming out of Texas right now is very obviously an attack on the queer community,” Holladay said. “In times like these, I think having a supportive community where you can experience joy and experience grief or whatever it is you need to experience, and having that support come from other people who understand, is really important.” For Jorge Arnez Gonzales, a Rice Pride copresident, the QRC has become a place for him to express his queer identity in a way he couldn’t in high school. An international student from Bolivia, Arnez Gonzales said that growing up without LGBTQ+ resources has made this decision especially important to him personally. “I grew up without having any of these resources back in my home country. I don’t think there’s any university I know of [in Bolivia] that has a queer-specific resource center,” Arnez Gonzalez said. “When
legislation tries to divide us up or bring some of us down, it’s the responsibility of the people who are less affected to help those who are being specifically targeted or affected.” Extending this membership to outside communities isn’t without its challenges, though. Now that Rice Pride membership has nearly doubled, Holladay said funding will be a large obstacle in hosting events and sharing resources such as contraceptives and safe sex materials. Paige Fastnow, a QRC coordinator, said that the QRC is currently brainstorming ways to handle other logistical challenges as well. New honorary members are coming from all over Texas, not just the Houston area, and Rice Pride hopes to make their resources and events as accessible as possible. “At least for the general body meetings, we’re really hoping to have a digital way of accessing that,” Fastnow, a Duncan College sophomore, said. “With some of our bigger
SEE QRC PAGE 2
Owls horned down by Texas, Late-night dining at Rice is hard to come by. lose 37-10 in season opener Sid Richardson College just made it easier. KATHLEEN ORTIZ
FOR THE THRESHER
Rice football led the University of Texas Longhorns for exactly 2 minutes and 40 seconds on Saturday when the teams met for the 97th time. Being ahead may have been unfamiliar, but the final result was not — Rice lost to Texas again, this time by a score of 37-10, for the Owls’ 75th loss against the Longhorns. While Rice’s 3-0 start, courtesy of a
KATHLEEN ORTIZ / THRESHER JT Daniels prepares to throw a pass. In his Rice debut, Daniels threw for 149 yards, ran for -6 yards and passed for a touchdown.
43-yard field goal from redshirt junior Tim Horn, did not last long, coach Mike Bloomgren praised the defense’s ability to force a turnover on downs to end Texas’ first offensive drive of the game. “That was a very fun time in the game, but it’s also what I think we were capable of for the entirety of the game and, again, that’s what we’ve got to work towards,” Bloomgren said of the first four minutes
SEE FOOTBALL PAGE 10
PAIGE FASTNOW
FOR THE THRESHER
With the serveries closed and the Hoot only open for some of the week, latenight dining at Rice quickly becomes limited. But a new initiative at Sid Richardson College has set its sights on changing that. Sid Shoots the Cheese — a pun on the college’s GroupMe chat “Sid Shoots the Breeze” — is a pop-up restaurant project started by Sid Richardson sophomore Arjun Surya. The project aims to sell latenight grilled cheese sandwiches, when other on-campus dining options are scarce. Although Surya first proposed the idea, Sid Shoots the Cheese is hosted at and by Sid Richardson College in their commons as a committee initiative. At this point, the committee GroupMe chat has over 50 members, and between 10 to 15 people actively ran the project’s opening event. The size of this project may come as a surprise to students at any of the 10 other colleges on campus, but the project has been in the works for quite a long time.
The idea was born when Surya noticed the reception to grilled cheese at the campus serveries. “The days that the serveries had grilled cheese tended to be the times where the lines were the longest,” Surya said. “It was also unfortunate that last year, a lot of the places were closed on Fridays and Saturdays. I just thought it would be really convenient if we had food [on campus] that a lot of people love.” But Sid Shoots the Cheese doesn’t follow the conventional American cheese recipe used by the serveries. Surya was emphatic that every ingredient, from the type and cut of cheese (“a mix of sliced gouda and hand-shredded cheddar, Monterey and Colby Jack”) to even the salt (combining garlic salt and Italian seasoning), was the result of years of trial and error. “Whenever I was at home during COVID, I would just make grilled cheese sandwiches all the time. Over time, I started experimenting with things like a parmesan crust and Italian seasoning,”
SEE GRILLED CHEESE PAGE 7