VOLUME 109, ISSUE NO. 22 | STUDENT-RUN SINCE 1916 | RICETHRESHER.ORG | WEDNESDAY, MARCH 26, 2025
Out with the old, in with the new
Baseball fires Cruz, hires Pierce in ‘unconventional’ mid-season restructure KATHLEEN ORTIZ & RIYA MISRA
SPORTS EDITOR & EDITOR-IN-CHIEF
Rice Athletics fired baseball head coach José Cruz Jr. on March 13, less than a month into the season. The baseball team is 2-14 and on a 10-game losing streak, losing three games to Yale over the weekend and Texas A&M - Corpus Christi on Monday. Just days later, Rice welcomed baseball veteran David Pierce to fill Cruz’s seat. “I do not take lightly the dismissal of a legendary Owl such as Coach Cruz,” said Athletic Director Tommy McClelland in a March 13 statement. “However, I came to the decision that it was in the best interest of our student-athletes and our baseball program to make a coaching change now while there is so much of the season remaining.”
COURTESY CARLOS GONZALEZ – RICE ATHLETICS
SEE BASEBALL CHANGES PAGE 11
COURTESY RICE ATHLETICS José Cruz Jr. (left) speaks with David Pierce (right) at a 2022 baseball game. At the time, Cruz and Pierce head coached for Rice and the University of Texas at Austin, respectively.
COURTESY MARIA LYSAKER – RICE ATHLETICS
PHOTO ILLUSTRATION BY ALICE SUN / THRESHER
read more on page 11
Elisa Gabbert on writing Rice under investigation for ‘raceexclusionary’ practices through disaster CHI PHAM
THRESHER STAFF Memory deceives. Perception distorts. For Elisa Gabbert ’02, the ubiquitous condition of our times is ‘unreality’ — modern society’s tendency to process catastrophe as media spectacle and bury anxieties beneath routine. In her 2020 essay collection “The Unreality of Memory,” she dissects why tragedy leaves us scrolling, watching and forgetting. In her opening essay, Gabbert remembers the Houston sky was “bright blue” on the day of the Sept. 11 attacks. When she arrived at the student center, she noticed a crowd gathered around a television, watching the coverage as if it was just “something on TV,” Gabbert said. “It was just super surreal and eerie,” Gabbert said in an interview with the Thresher. “People were kind of wandering around, basically doing their typical routines, wherever they would normally go … There was sort of no right way to react or act, so we were all just kind of going through our typical motions. “I remember … not really knowing if we were supposed to go to class or not because they didn’t actually
automatically cancel all classes or anything like that. And I had a yoga class that I was supposed to go to, of all things, and I remember going … and I remember some people getting up and leaving, crying. “But there was a real sense of just unreality, and nobody knowing how we were supposed to act. It was just so out of anyone’s experience at that point.” The collection emerged from Gabbert’s preoccupation with the relationship between disaster and psychological processes — how tragedy, though endlessly documented, remains difficult to fully grasp or make real, she said. “Around that time when Trump was elected for the first time, I just had this real urgent sense that I needed to take on more difficult and serious subjects,” Gabbert said. “And that was one of the first essays I wrote when my mind was there, when I was thinking more about climate catastrophe [and the] ways that it seemed like reality and the systems around me were falling apart … That essay was the first one I took on when I wanted to think, how do we think about this new kind of reality?”
SEE GABBERT PAGE 7
JAMES CANCELARICH
ASST. NEWS EDITOR
The Department of Education is investigating Rice, alongside 44 other universities, for engaging in alleged “raceexclusionary” practices. The investigations come amid allegations that these universities’ partnership with The Ph.D. Project violates Title IX of the Civil Rights Act. The Ph.D. Project is an organization founded “with the goal of creating more role models in the front of business classes,” according to its website. The ED’s Office for Civil Rights alleged in a press release that the organization limits the eligibility of participants based on their race. Schools found to be in violation of Title IX could potentially lose their federal funding. “We are reviewing our participation in the Ph.D. Project and are cooperating with investigators from the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights,” Chris Stipes, a university spokesperson, wrote in an email to the Thresher. “Rice University is deeply committed to promoting an inclusive environment for all members of the community. We are dedicated to upholding the principles of diversity, academic freedom and excellence while ensuring strict adherence to all federal and state laws.” Rice received about $129 million of federal
research funding in 2024, according to the Office of Research. This move arrives amid the Trump administration’s repeated attacks on diversity, equity and inclusion — especially on university campuses. The Department of Education released a “Dear Colleague” letter on Feb. 14, which warned universities about the potential for discriminatory conduct under DEI programs. At Columbia University, Trump pulled over $400 million in federal funding and demanded that they ban masks on campus, increase the capability of campus police and allow oversight over its controversial department of Middle East, South Asian and African Studies as well as the Center for Palestine Studies, among other things. The funding is on track to be restored after Columbia capitulated to the conditions set by the federal government. At Rice, the Office of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion was renamed to the Office of Access and Institutional Excellence amid this federal scrutiny. Rice’s federal funding was previously under threat when the National Institutes of Health planned to cut indirect funding to 15%, which would have reduced Rice’s funding by about $4 million. The order is currently held up by a temporary restraining order issued by a judge due to numerous lawsuits, one of which included testimony by Provost Amy Dittmar.