VOLUME 110, ISSUE NO. 09 | STUDENT-RUN SINCE 1916 | RICETHRESHER.ORG | WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 29, 2025
Running back breaks records in upset over UConn ANDERSEN PICKARD
SPORTS EDITOR
During Rice football’s bye week, redshirt junior running back Quinton Jackson said that he felt healthy and energized. But after a 37-34 win in double overtime against the University of Connecticut Saturday, all he wanted to do was take a nap. “To be honest, I’m exhausted,” Jackson said postgame. “I could just lay down right now.” Jackson’s 248 scrimmage yards are the most by a Rice player since at least 1995. He surpassed the previous high mark of 243 yards set Nov. 4, 2006, by running back Quinton Smith. Jackson also scored four touchdowns, including the game-winner in double overtime. “If there’s a young man across this country who plays with more heart, and plays bigger and more explosive and harder than [Jackson], I’d like to find him,” head coach Scott Abell said. Jackson was named an honorable mention for American Conference Offensive Player of the Week. “It’s always good to be recognized, but I don’t play for that,” Jackson said. “I just want to go out there and play for my team.” UConn struck for a 80-yard touchdown pass on its first play from scrimmage, putting the Owls in an early deficit. This was an all-toofamiliar sight for the Rice defense, which allowed a touchdown on the second play of the previous game against the University of Texas at San Antonio.
KAIRI MANO / THRESHER Offensive lineman Luke Miller and slot receiver Drayden Dickmann celebrate with running back Quinton Jackson at their game against the University of Connecticut Saturday. Jackson broke multiple records and scored four touchdowns in the Owls’ 37-34 win over the Huskies.
SEE FOOTBALL PAGE 14
‘The spirit of success’: Drinking in Rice’s alcohol policies over the years NOAH BERZ
FEATURES EDITOR
WHAT’S INSIDE
Kermit Lancaster ’77 arrived at Rice during a historic moment for American college students. Just as Orientation Week (then called Freshman Week) was coming to a close, the legal drinking age was lowered from 21 to 18 nationwide. Lancaster said a rowdy campus drinking culture is nothing new at Rice. The only difference now, he said, is the administration’s response to it. This semester kicked off with recordbreaking Dis-Orientation transports and administrative threats of campus going dry. Combined with the 2024 cancellation of Night of Decadence and hiatus from all public parties, these events expose patterns of excessive drinking and alcoholrelated sanctions at Rice. A look through the university’s history with alcohol reveals this tension is nothing new. Following the end of Prohibition in 1933, debates on whether or not Rice should allow drinking on campus flooded the pages of the Thresher. An editorial from a 1934 issue of the Thresher celebrated the end of the era, claiming that “the act never did keep college students from drinking.”
Others condemned drinking on campus, like one member of a now-defunct Christian student organization who argued that “the spirit of success is never found in bottles” and “the alcohol custom bars the way to God” in a 1949 issue of the Thresher. In spring 1948, the assistant dean for student activities banned Rondelet and other student functions from serving wine and hard liquor, but said nothing about what students drank before arriving. Beer could be served to anyone attending the dances, regardless of age. Despite sporadic attempts to regulate drinking throughout the ’40s and ’50s, Rice soon gained a reputation for being rowdier than its peer institutions, according to a 1948 issue of the Thresher. “Pupils at our great state university … are whispering, ‘But have you been to a Rice dance?’” the issue reads. “Rice Institute (the students) are whole heartedly alcoholistic: To an outsider, it would appear that any affair … quickly degenerates into a drunken brawl. To an insider it looks the same way.” Lancaster visited campus in October 1972 for his admissions interview and stayed in a friend’s dorm room the same weekend that NOD happened for the
M. HULBERT / THRESHER Jones College students convene for a drinking event in 1985. Rice’s first official alcohol policy was instituted the following year. first time. He was only 17, and it would be another 10 months before he would matriculate to Wiess College, but he had no trouble getting into the party. “I don’t ever remember anybody checking ages or anything like that for admission to a party,” Lancaster said. “It was just shrug shoulders, let it go.”
Lancaster said he remembers quite a bit of drinking in his time at Rice, like Hanszen’s “shot-a-minute” contest, where students would line up and take shots of beer each minute until only one person was left standing.
SEE DRINKING HISTORY PAGE 8
A&E RICE SUED OVER CHAUS MUFFIN PHOTO PAGE 2
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ARM WRESTLING CLUB DEBUTS PAGE 11
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RUGBY ADAPTS TO NEW CONFERENCE PAGE 14