VOLUME 110, ISSUE NO. 3 | STUDENT-RUN SINCE 1916 | RICETHRESHER.ORG | WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 10, 2025
Fizz users and moderators talk fame, challenges EMILY NGUYEN
THRESHER STAFF
During the volleyball team’s face-off against the University of Texas at Austin on Sept. 3, Jack Vu decided to have a little fun with the scoreboard. An anonymous poster had inaccurately mentioned that Rice beat UT on Fizz, so Vu decided to join in. “I posted a picture of the scoreboard saying ‘Rice wins,’” said Vu, a Sid Richardson College freshman. “I pretended like Rice won the volleyball game.” Three years since the anonymous social media app arrived on campus, Fizz has become a hub for gossip, student mobilization and even misinformation that shapes how students see themselves and one another. Audrey Arroyave, a Lovett College senior and Fizz moderator, said that anonymity gives students the courage to speak out against campus policies or frustrations with administration, but can also give students an excuse to spread negativity, especially to incoming freshmen. “In regards to mobilizing students against something that they all don’t agree with, there was so much unity on Fizz during the meal swipe thing,” Arroyave said. “But then, when it comes to talking about the worst colleges, talking about publics being bad, especially for the freshmen who can now join Fizz the summer before they even come here, I think that’s really bad, and I think there should be a way to not allow that.”
SEE FIZZ PAGE 4
New exhibit combines biotech and art ARMAN SAXENA
A&E EDITOR
Record-breaking crowds, not wins Attendance soars as football and volleyball both lose to rival teams JULIANA LIGHTSEY
MANAGING EDITOR
A sea of students in various shades of blue stood shoulder-to-shoulder as the football team fell 35-9 to the University of Houston on Saturday. The game had the highest spectator count for a football home game since 2019. Three days prior, a packed student section broke the attendance
record at Tudor Fieldhouse as the volleyball team lost 3-1 to the University of Texas at Austin. Both games followed wins from each team, and students were encouraged to attend by Rice Rally Club and Rice Athletics with T-shirt giveaways and events such as a pep rally and tailgate. A total of 30,116 spectators attended the football game, which
was the annual Bayou Bucket Classic between the crosstown rivals. The matchup will not happen again until at least 2030, UH Athletic Director Eddie Nuñez said to the Houston Chronicle. 3,017 spectators attended volleyball’s game against Texas, five more than the previous attendance record, which was also set in 2019.
READ MORE IN SPORTS PAGE 14-15
CAYDEN CHEN / THRESHER Rice students watch the Bayou Bucket Classic football game against the University of Houston on Sept. 6. The spectator count was the highest since 2019.
The Moody Center’s fall exhibition, “Bio Morphe,” opens a conversation between the human body and the natural world through seven artists working at the edge of science, craft and technology. Curated by Frauke V. Josenhans, the show explores biomorphism — patterns and forms inspired by living systems — and asks how contemporary materials and processes change the way we see ourselves. “Everything’s in movement,” Josenhans said during a walkthrough of the exhibition. “So we move from one space to the next.” In the central gallery, Fàbregas presents three large-scale sculptures from her series on metabolic processes that appear to seep from the architecture. Fàbregas built each form by marrying elastic fabric and latex, then shaping them with air. “I put [air] there and I take it out, and that’s how all these wrinkles begin to appear,” Fàbregas said. “So it’s like a breathing process … I make them inhale and exhale for the first time.” For Fàbregas, latex itself is part of the story. “Latex is also an excavation of a tree,” she said. “It’s the rubber that comes from a tree when it has a wound, it’s a material that never is stable, and it’s always changing and transforming … After they leave the studio, they have a livelihood of their own.”
SEE MOODY PAGE 11