VOLUME 109, ISSUE NO. 3 | STUDENT-RUN SINCE 1916 | RICETHRESHER.ORG | WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 11, 2024
RICHARD LI / THRESHER
Rice issues restrictions on campus protests, poster displays SARAH KNOWLTON
NEWS EDITOR
Rice football slaughters TSU for biggest win in over a century ANDERSEN PICKARD
ASST. SPORTS EDITOR
Rice Football avenged its opening week loss with a 69-7 victory over Texas Southern University on Saturday evening. “We wanted to get the taste out of our mouth,” redshirt sophomore safety Tyson Flowers said. “We know we didn’t play to the best of our ability [in Week 1].” Saturday marked one of the most dominant wins in program history. The 62-point difference is the Owls’ largest margin of victory since Nov. 17, 1916 — over a century ago — when they cruised to a 146-3 win over Southern Methodist University. 17,760 fans were in attendance to watch history be made at Rice Stadium, representing a slight 2.7% increase from football’s Week 1 attendance. Saturday’s game theme centered around residential college pride. Players had their residential college’s decal affixed to their helmets, and Rice Rally Club held a competition to see which residential college had the most students in attendance. Duncan College was declared the winner.
Elsewhere in the stadium, several campus groups — including RiceVotes, the Kelley Center for Government Information and voter registrar volunteers — hosted a voter registration booth. They encouraged students and other fans to cast a ballot in this November’s general election. The buzz from the stands was mirrored by energy on the field as Rice stormed out to a quick 7-0 lead on a five-yard touchdown run from senior running back Dean Connors. Redshirt sophomore kicker Enock Gota converted Rice’s extra point, marking a personnel change. The Owls had previously relied on redshirt senior Tim Horn as their kicker, but he went just 8-for-12 on field goals last year and missed a 37-yard attempt in Week 1. Gota had previously only attempted one kick in the NCAA — a successful extra point against TSU on Sept. 16, 2023. “It’s difficult because Tim Horn does everything in our program right,” head coach Mike Bloomgren said. “But at the end of the day, Enock [Gota] has been really consistent. It just reached a point where it was time to give Enock a chance.”
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RICHARD LI / THRESHER Above, Owls and Tigers collide during the Sept. 7 football game. Rice won 69-7, their largest victory margin in over a century.
At home and in the studio with Do Ho Suh HANNAH SON
THRESHER STAFF Visitors strolled through rows of sketches, thumbtacks and sticky notes pinned to the gallery walls of the Moody Center for the Arts during the Sept. 6 opening of “Do Ho Suh: In Process.” The exhibition emulates the studio of worldrenowned artist Do Ho Suh, featuring major works by the South Korean-born and London-based artist in an unprecedented presentation of Suh’s practice that emphasizes his methodology and process. Alison Weaver, executive director of the Moody Center and the curator of “In Process,” described Suh’s vision as an intimate display of his creative method. “It feels a bit as if [Suh] has invited all of us to visit his studio,” Weaver said. “I feel very honored that he trusted us here at Rice to share these very personal materials and make them available to the public.” Gesturing towards “The Bridge Project” — Suh’s multi-decade work that imagines a physical bridge between his past and present homes in Seoul, New York and London — Weaver identified Suh’s artistic signature as an approach of ongoing inquiry. “[Suh’s works] are iterative, they’re creative, and it takes a certain durational quality to continue to engage with them,” Weaver said. “I keep calling it ‘speculative
FAITH ZHANG / THRESHER Visitors view “Do Ho Suh: In Progress,” a new Moody Center exhibition. research,’ because he has an idea or hypothesis which is fantastical, but then he works hard to make it real.” Years after Suh began “The Bridge Project” in 1999, he collaborated with Rice engineering students to bring new life to the project. Kalil Erazo, an assistant teaching professor of civil and environmental engineering, described the capstone project in which Suh collaborated with Rice engineering students to envision architecturally viable bridges. “Initially it was quite challenging trying to understand the vision of the artist, particularly coming from an engineering background,” Erazo said. “But then …
combining [Suh’s] expertise with the work of the engineering team resulted in an incredible multidisciplinary collaboration where we all learned from one another.” Weaver and Suh sought to capture the significance of this collaborative process for Suh’s work. “When it came time to present the work, instead of … just pulling completed works out of the closet, we thought it would be interesting to … share what [Suh] goes through as he’s innovating and thinking about visually representing these ideas,” Weaver said.
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Rice policy now allows all faculty and staff to remove posters and restricts the permitted times and locations for public demonstrations. The changes went into effect Aug. 30, according to an announcement from Kelly Fox, executive vice president for operations, finance and support. Other universities are enacting similar policies as campuses brace for students’ return, just months after protests about the war in Gaza swept the nation — including Rice, where students erected a two-day “liberated zone.” In June, administrators at the University of Pennsylvania banned encampments. In July, Harvard University was reportedly in talks to also ban overnight camping, as well as chalking and unapproved signage. Critics across the country have decried universities’ new policies, claiming they violate free speech rights. Rice’s new chapter of Faculty and Staff for Justice in Palestine, released its first public statement denouncing the changes to both policies.
If Rice is following other universities’ efforts nationally to silence students, staff and faculty seeking to end the genocide in Palestine, then we must remonstrate these new policies. Sept. 7 statement posted to SJP’s Instagram “The new policies impose limits on speech and assembly, consequently discouraging and foreclosing political and ethical expression,” the statement, posted to Instagram Aug. 31, reads. “If Rice is following other universities’ efforts nationally to silence students, staff and faculty seeking to end the genocide in Palestine, then we must remonstrate these new policies.” Policy 820, which regulates campus demonstrations and protests, now states that events may only take place between the hours of 8 a.m. and 10 p.m. and can last no longer than eight hours per day. Multi-day demonstrations are restricted to three days. Prior versions of the policy stated that potential demonstrations must be submitted for approval at least 48 hours prior to the event, but has no specific limits regarding time or place. The majority of new changes to Policy 820, including rules on use of amplified sound and guidelines on how to report policy violations, are intended to codify “existing standards” that Rice had previously implemented on a case-by-case basis, according to Fox. Policy 856, which regulates posters and signage around campus, has also been changed to state that any Rice employee is now authorized to remove posters that violate rules on placement and formatting. Employees are not allowed to remove posters based on content. The guidelines previously stated that posters could only be removed by the school of study in which the poster is placed or the staff of that building. When asked by the Thresher why it was necessary to authorize more employees to remove posters, Fox stated that the
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