The Rice Thresher | September 2, 2026

VOLUME 111, ISSUE NO.02 | STUDENT-RUN SINCE 1916 | RICETHRESHER.ORG | WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 2, 2026

Delusion prevails

Inside the startups swarming Houston hacker house

AMELIA DAVIS / THRESHER

Members of the Rice Residency cohort vibecode around a shared laptop. The hacker house was established to bring student founders together.

AMELIA DAVIS

FEATURES EDITOR As soon as I step through the door of the Rice Residency, known colloquially as a hacker house, a piping hot hotteok — a Korean fried spiral of dough with a cinnamon and nut center — is passed to me by Nathan Kwon, a Will Rice College junior.

A question swiftly follows the snack: “Would you buy it for a dollar?” He isn’t just a gracious host. It’s product testing.

Apparently, the flow of feedback is continuous. He asks Lana Yepifanova, the house’s founder and a Will Rice senior, if the recipe is better than yesterday’s. It transpires that the nuts are new.

The most pressing issue on these students’ minds is not how to pass midterms, but how to break into the San Francisco tech utopia, which is described as a sort of candy rock mountain for startups. It’s the promised land, where funding flows like water and investors can be found behind every bush.

However, in this hacker house, the projects are not limited to the coding behemoths that one might expect to be flooding the market.

In fact, this cohort’s ideas align less with that traditional venture than those from the summer cohort’s, Yepifanova said. “[Last cohort], there was a lot more interest in computer vision, AI, research, sort of a typical San Francisco vibe,” Yepifanova said.

“Whereas this semester, this cohort’s people are more interested in media and consumer.”

A consumer product would be one that is tangible — such as the hotteok — rather than an app or software. The summer cohort of 11 people was also larger than this fall’s group of nine, simply because several people left for accelerators, gap years or San Francisco when their projects started taking off.

It took Yepifanova a bit of experimenting to $nd the balance between being choosy and paying rent. She had plenty of applicants to pick from: For the summer cohort, which was the house’s $rst, there were 280 applications for the 12 or so spots in the house.

For the second round of applications, she had re$ned the vetting process based on the experience of recruiting for the summer.

The main quali$cation she looked for in prospective residents? Delusion.

“The vibe of the house is like, we want everyone to be as delusional as possible,

because you’re young, and you can do a lot of things, I think, if you’re just a little delusional,” Yepifanova said.

That viewpoint appears to be contagious, at least among our new aspiring tech class.

My visit coincides with the $rst coworking session, which will be run weekly, inviting residents and interested applicants alike to spend a few hours working or chatting about their ideas.

At the session, someone says that it’s “OK to be a consultant … $rst,” before moving on to a startup. That seems to be the consensus: Eventually, creating something of their own is the ambition. Sometimes, multiple things.

Yepifanova is the founder of two — sort of three — companies. One was a media agency, which is not truly a company in Yepifanova’s estimation — more of a “consultant slash freelancer thing.”

“I think I made around $25K as a service company. That’s the issue with services — that it caps pretty quickly — versus software. I only worked on it for like four or six months and had a $300K exit.”

To some college students, these are unbelievable numbers to see in a bank account. To Yepifanova, it ranks only as “still less than what they raised in San Francisco.”

At least one person can testify to the truth of that claim. Christopher Tang, a member of the summer cohort, is now in San Francisco.

Though he attends Stanford University, when his family moved to Houston, he posted about it on LinkedIn — and was promptly invited to stay at the house.

Encouraged by his new roommates, he was promptly accepted into a ‘reject’ camp hosted by an educational-technology startup called Paradigm. The camp consisted of a reality TV show hosted in San Francisco for people rejected from startups or other accelerators, where they worked on an arti$cial intelligence course generator coupled with an inherent veri$cation system.

After the camp, he had come to love the driven and passionate environment so much that he wanted to stay in San Francisco; he was hired to a work trial with Paradigm in a technical position until the Stanford term begins.

In a text to the Thresher, Tang said his experience has also shown him that environment matters in more ways than one: The tech utopia can be a double-edged sword.

PAGE 2 WHAT’S INSIDE CAREER PLACEMENT DATA

“Everyone thinks they can become great,” Tang said. “They’re trying their best to walk towards the vision that they have, which is an environment I really like, but then the downside is that a lot of situations end up becoming very transactional, and a lot of people are fake and they’re only there for the connections.”

Though he has been successful, he also got a glimpse of those who haven’t been.

“After you get here, you also don’t romanticize the startup life as much, because you see that the line between founder and homeless is very thin,” Tang said.

Luckily, the goal at Rice Residency doesn’t seem to necessarily include the quali$er ‘successful’ in the claim that they want to create startups — their motives are not necessarily so limited. The house itself aids in that constant quest for inspiration.

Back in Houston, the hacker house consists of one building with two apartments, adding up to nine rooms total. Personal space comes at a premium. Duncan College junior Nolan Connolly was one of the founders in the summer cohort. He was also one of three men sleeping in one room, with about one inch between their mattresses and no bed frames to speak of.

However, Connolly said that the close quarters could be inspiring, as well as cramped.

Early on in the summer, he had an opportunity to sell his project, a learning management system — a software platform, like Canvas — for homeschool, and was working on a new startup with the Liu Idea Lab for Innovation and Entrepreneurship summer program alongside one of his roommates.

The third roommate, however, got accepted into Y Combinator, a well-regarded startup accelerator, midway through the summer.

“That was part of the spark. It was so inspirational to see this person that I watched work every day — and honestly, I’m not gonna lie — every day I watched him work harder than me,” Connolly said. “It was de$nitely like a function of like, ‘He was so passionate about what he was doing,’ and I feel like everything in his story and his journey was all driven on a passion and a personal desire to have this thing exist rather than like, ‘Oh, I’m going to go be rich.’”

The environment of possibility — and, yes,

AMELIA DAVIS / THRESHER Nathan Kwon, Will Rice College junior, pours hotteok batter into a frying pan. He was testing his recipe for other members of the house to sample. even delusion, as Yepifanova suggests — is a part of that inspiration, even if to the residents it is simply embracing a different worldview.

“Sometimes when you talk to people about the big ambition you might have, a startup idea you might have, it can sometimes be demotivating to see the way that they interpret what you’re saying and how you $t into their worldview,” Connolly said.

“When you’re around people who all have a similar worldview, or at least are very supportive of that worldview, it sort of compounds where you’re able to lean into that part of you and really see what you’re capable of,” Connolly continued.

However, the house may have the rise and fall of a typical Valley startup. This autumn could be both its second and last cohort, unless a protege can be acquired expeditiously.

Yepifanova is graduating in the spring, and one of the reasons the coworking sessions are being run is to $nd someone who might be interested in taking over the leadership of the house after she leaves Rice.

For her protege, if they manifest themselves, she has one hope in particular.

“I think the person that is running the house should do their best to get to know each person very individually,” Yepifanova said.

“I know everyone super well — exactly what they’re doing, what the update is on [their project], what they’ve worked on. Whoever would take on the house, I would hope that they would do the same.”

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2 • WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 2 , 2026

Rice beyond Houston: How graduates are placing nationally TOBY CHOU

ASST. NEWS EDITOR As Rice expands with its largest incoming freshman class ever, new programs have explored how to expand their career prospects beyond a Texas footprint.

Camille Elmore, associate director of employer engagement and data management at the Center for Career Development, said about 48% of Rice graduates remain in Texas and other bordering states, with the rest scattered across the U.S. and abroad.

The most popular metropolitan area is Houston. The second most popular metropolitan area is New York.

“Typically, Rice students have come from everywhere, and they always go everywhere,” Elmore said. “So, we have not seen a huge increase in the number or percentage of students going to the East Coast or the West Coast because it’s always kind of been that way, and I think that’s a misconception. You know that Rice is hyperlocal, but Rice is also hyperglobal.”

According to the CCD, among the top industries Rice graduates are placing into is internet and so!ware, which has been the most popular for the past three years.

“We’re definitely seeing an increase in [artificial intelligence] opportunities,” Elmore said. “You’ll see that’s one of the reasons that we’re having AI and tech careers night this

year instead of just a tech careers night.”

In the finance world, the Moody Scholars Program launched last year and seeks to equip business students for competitive careers in finance, management and marketing.

We’re not a target school for the New York firms, Some students had expressed some frustration in being able to get access to those firms and being able to do the process of interviewing.

Robert Dittmar ASSOCIATE DEAN OF THE VIRANI UNDERGRADUATE SCHOOL OF BUSINESS

Robert Dittmar, associate dean of the Virani Undergraduate School of Business, said graduates expressed difficulty breaking into New York City-based firms.

“We’re not a target school for the New York firms,” Dittmar said. “Some students had expressed some frustration in being able to get access to those firms and being

able to do the process of interviewing. I thought about the program as a way to try to help a selective group of students who’ve really demonstrated their interest in finance careers.”

Dittmar said Rice’s lack of historical ties to the Northeast is one of the main reasons that firms don’t consider Rice graduates as highly.

“I came here from the University of Michigan,” Dittmar said. “And I think there’s something like maybe 800 undergraduate business students per class, whereas we’re more like around 200 students per class, and so the banks are kind of dealing with a known quantity. The business undergraduate program here is relatively new, so we don’t have that track record.”

While Rice has an established Masters of Business Administration program, Rice’s undergraduate business major was only created in 2021.

Dittmar said the goal of the program is to give students a combination of extra training as well as hands-on immersive experiences in order to make them more competitive for firms in the Northeast.

“We’re trying to give them a little bit of extra help in terms of technical training for the program, some behavioral training in terms of networking and resume skills,” Dittmar said.

Dittmar said because most of the banking in Houston is energy focused, students who

Career outcomes for 2025 graduates

have interests outside of energy feel that they are behind compared to their peers. He hopes the Virani School’s opening can help students achieve their goals, wherever they want to end up.

“Rice definitely has a national reputation,” Dittmar said. “But I think that national reputation can also be sort of boosted to some extent through exposure, and so I think part of what I’m hoping to accomplish here is to put Rice on the map for some of these firms who might not have otherwise thought of it as a place to recruit.”

Henry Loeschman, a Lovett College Freshman, said that while he personally was not planning on applying for the Moody Scholars program, he feels confident in finding a job post-graduation. The Finance track is the only program currently available, while the management and marketing tracks will be available in the future, in 2027 and 2028 respectively.

“Rice offers a lot of support through its networking, especially for consulting and management,” Loeschman said. “Rice Business also allows a lot of wiggle room for a second major, which I think will help distinguish me from other applicants.”

3% 4% 8%

32%

53%

17%

14%

10%

44%

5%

Job/working Continuing education

7%

Seeking education Seeking employment Seeking employment

Outside of the United States: 3%

COURTESY RICE CENTER FOR CAREER DEVELOPMENT

Chabad at Rice to construct Honor Council announces exam proctoring pilot group a new Jewish Student Center and expand physical footprint ABIGAIL CHIU

NEWS EDITOR

There will be 20 classes piloting a new examination proctoring system, the Honor Council announced on Aug. 27 in a campuswide email. The Rice Honor Code, created in 1912, prohibits deliberate proctoring of exams.

The change will be rolled out in a Proctoring Test Group Program to evaluate whether this policy should be changed and what form that change would take, according to the email. The PTGP Working Group was formed a!er a November 2025 survey of Rice undergraduates and faculty to oversee the pilot.

Felix Wang, the judicial chair of Honor Council’s judicial chair, said TKTK. “This tradition is based on a sense of

mutual trust between faculty and students dating back to the founding of Rice University.

Part of this trust relies on students reporting any potential violations rather than proctors,” the email read. “While this trust remains a significant feature of our academic community, the Council has noticed increasing challenges with this system.”

The email said under the current system, it is difficult for students to both take their own exam and monitor for Honor Code violations on others.

“In the two years since the introduction of Confidential Accusations, the Council has received fewer than ten accusations, and when violations are reported, they frequently lack sufficient evidence to effectively adjudicate them,” the email read. “At the same time, the Council has observed an increase in reported instances of cheating on in-person exams.”

TOBY CHOU

ASST. NEWS EDITOR On Sunday, Chabad at Rice held a ceremony celebrating the start of construction for a new Jewish Student Center next to the Rice campus and adjacent to the existing Chabad house.

Chabad at Rice is an organization with the goal of connecting Jewish students at Rice University, University of Houston, the surrounding medical schools and other neighboring universities. They host weekly Shabbat dinners, ongoing social events, holiday celebrations and classes.

This new student center will be 16,000 square feet, with an expansive ballroom, a professional-grade kosher commercial kitchen and a Judaic library among other new amenities.

Chabad’s current 3,000-square-foot facility regularly welcomes about 40 students for each Shabbat and about 100 students for major holidays. The current location is on Dryden Road, near the BioScience Research Collaborative, and the empty lot is next to it.

With this new student center, they hope to comfortably host up to 250 students for events.

WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 2, 2026 • 3

NEWS

Rice Student Association attempts to engage campus with feedback and chicken

Students gather in Chao College Commons for the first traveling Senate. The series aims to increase student engagment with the Rice Student Association.

CAMERON GUTIERREZ

THRESHER STAFF

Rice Student Association hosted its second Senate of the year this Monday in Chao College Commons, the first of the RSA’s traveling Senate series.

The series was introduced to increase student engagement with the RSA. Previously, Chelsea Asibbey, RSA president, said the series was created to combat the perception that Senate was tucked away and inaccessible. At Chao College, the RSA served chicken wings, with other themed food items planned for the subsequent traveling Senates.

Cedric Lau, RSA chief of staff, said turnout for the first of the traveling senate series was favorable, noting that many of the attendants were freshmen.

“We’re so happy new students are engaged with RSA, we welcome you,” Lau said. “There’s a position for you.”

Alongside the efforts to increase student engagement with Senate, the body’s efforts this week were directed toward student feedback.

College senators discussed implementation of the Rice Recreation Center Improvement Task Force, aimed at connecting students with Rec leadership to provide recommendations for improvements.

“The student voice has felt disconnected from decisions that affect student life across campus, and this task force is a step toward restoring that voice in decisions that have historically been made for us,” said Jake Pessin, the Chao senator who co-wrote the bill.

Bruce Hurley, Lovett College president, and Yazmin Miles, McMurtry College president, expressed concern over waiving prior notice on the matter, which would expedite the committee’s implementation.

The objections led Senate to defer the vote until next week.

The RSA also introduced the launch

of a campus feedback form, which will solicit general opinions from across campus. Mahtab Dastur, RSA internal vice president, said senators should distribute the form widely so that students who do not attend the Senate can still raise issues and ideas.

“We really value feedback, and recently there hasn’t been a central place to give feedback, so we really hope this will open the channels of communication and feedback from students to us,” said Dastur, a Duncan College junior.

The student voice has felt disconnected from decisions that affect student life across campus, and this task force is a step toward restoring that voice in decisions that have historically been made for us.

Jake Pessin CHAO COLLEGE SENATOR

Pessin, a sophomore, said student feedback produces solutions like the Rec Center Improvement Task Force.

“When students tell us what they want to see changed, we can work to bring those issues directly to the people who can address them,” Pessin said.

Victoria Constanza, a Hanszen College freshman in attendance, said she appreciated how the updated format made Senate more engaging.

“I thought the new format was pretty fun and engaging, and makes coming to Senate more accessible. I think this will make it a lot easier for I and my fellow students to stay engaged with the RSA,” Constanza said.

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4 • WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 2 , 2026

New anti-chants against Chao spark mixed feelings EESHA SURAPANENI

FOR THE THRESHESR

A residential college tradition, antichants target colleges in often fun and lighthearted jest. However, anti-chants targeted at Rice’s newest college, Chao College, sparked mixed feelings.

One particular chant goes, “Nobody likes me, where do I go? Chao, Chao, Chao!”

Intercollege chants are a foundational element of Rice’s residential college system, where different colleges show off

Anti-chants in general are friendly fire — there’s never been any real hatred against other students — and this is as much of a joke as other colleges’ anti-chants.

Shriya Ramanan DUNCAN COLLEGE SOPHOMORE

their pride during events like Orientation Week and Beer Bike. Historically, students will proudly shout chants in support of their college, which are then met with anti-chants from the other colleges.

Chao was announced as the 12th residential college in 2025 and welcomed its first matriculating class in fall 2026.

Upperclassmen were invited to apply to transfer to Chao to fill its first year of students.

The new Chao anti-chant appeared to be specifically directed at the upperclassmen who transferred to the college.

A!ab Mohammad, a Chao sophomore, shared that he knew people who transferred for a variety of reasons, from choosing to leave personal con%ict behind to prioritizing the new housing benefits.

He himself was drawn to the opportunity of being able to create a new culture on campus and hopes that the new antichants do not decrease future students’ college pride.

“The students who transferred are only going to be here for three years max,” Mohammad said. “Once we graduate, it’s just going to be new students — people who haven’t known their Rice experience without Chao. If this becomes the staple anti-chant against Chao, then you’re just going to be saying this to a bunch of students who matriculated into Chao.”

Anti-chants usually play on some quality that can be applied to a college as a whole.

Qais Altarabishi, a Chao sophomore, said while he wasn’t personally offended by the chant, he noticed most of the freshmen were confused about its context since it mainly targeted the advisers.

“I remember we were just very stunned, it’s a very unique chant,” Altarabishi said. “Some might have actually felt alienated in their previous communities ... I know it’s not necessarily what the chant’s intending, but there is a bit of a backspin on it.”

While some share this view, others have pointed out that every anti-chant pokes fun at some quality of a college, with the new ones essentially doing the same.

“Anti-chants in general are friendly fire — there’s never been any real hatred against other students — and this is as much of a joke as other colleges’ antichants,” said Shriya Ramanan, a Duncan College sophomore.

Students sharing this perspective note that anti-chants overall have been a part KONSTANTIN SAVVON/ THRESHER of the residential college system for a Chao College President Elijah White carries the flag through the Sallyport during Chao matriculation. Chao while now, with other colleges having is Rice’s newest residential college. comparable anti-chants as well, so similar chants arising against Chao are personally [like] ‘McMurtry kids are these anti-chants aren’t directed towards inevitable. ugly,’” said Raymond Xu, the Chao anyone in particular; they’re directed at “There are anti-chants for other secretary. “I think the students offended the college as a whole, and with no real colleges that could [also] be taken by the Chao anti-chant are forgetting that malice or intention to wound.”

Rice traditions wake up to new rules on early morning events RUBY GAO

ASST. NEWS EDITOR Orientation Week for the class of 2030 came to a close Aug. 21. One difference from previous years was that no events were allowed to begin earlier than 6 a.m., following the audit of all O-Week activities in February for hazing.

Early-wakeup events were an O-Week tradition shared by some colleges. On one designated day during O-Week, students are woken up by their advisors at 5 a.m. or earlier to participate in Mock Bike, which is a smaller version of Beer Bike.

The change in early morning wake-up events during O-Week follows a 2024 federal law, the Stop Campus Hazing Act. The law

I think colleges are going to work really hard to make sure they stay and that the essence of those events stick, even if they’re not happening at two in the morning.

Prasanna Bendalam CHAO COLLEGE O-WEEK COORDINATOR

requires universities that receive federal aid to disclose hazing incidents in their annual security reports. It also requires them to maintain a hazing prevention policy and publish a transparency report listing any student organizations found in violation.

Rice has published the annual hazing report for 2025-26. In accordance with federal law, hazing-related incidents are also reported

in Rice’s Annual Security and Fire Safety Report. No violations have been found since July 1, 2025, to date.

Prasanna Bendalam, a Chao College O-Week coordinator, said the planning of O-Week at Rice’s newest residential college was based entirely on guidelines provided by the Rice administration.

“We weren’t [going] to wake up anyone at two in the morning anyway, so I think it might have slightly changed what times we were planning on waking people up,” Bendalam, a sophomore, said. “But other than that, I don’t think it really affected us as much as it did other colleges.”

Jerry Wen, a Will Rice College freshman, said the later wake-up time was a positive change that gave students more time to rest.

“I am grateful,” Wen said. “That they chose to wake us up at a more appropriate time because I believe that day we went to bed at 11, and I hadn’t had seven hours of sleep the whole week, and I really would appreciate some sleep.”

In addition to the later wake-up time, bedtime during O-Week also changed, forcing students to go to sleep between 11 p.m. and midnight.

Bendalam said although the wake-up time was pushed later, the events’ charm was still preserved.

“At least from what I’ve heard from other courts and just from our experience, I think it still preserved a lot of the charm in those events,” Bendalam said. “No, of course things had to change, but I think a lot of colleges made the adjustments they had to do, and they did a very good job preserving what makes those events special.”

Bendalam said maintaining the college’s traditions and unique character still requires significant effort from the O-Week coordinator team.

“I think colleges are going to work really

hard to make sure they stay and that the essence of those events stick, even if they’re not happening at two in the morning,” Bendalam said.

As college Beer Bike committees prepare for the Beer Bike 2027, another event that traditionally includes early morning wake-up activities, the timing of wake-up events has also changed following the introduction of an opt-in system this year.

The opt-in system allows students who want to be woken up during the morning of Beer Bike Day to sign up. It has replaced the traditional system, which asked students who

didn’t want to be awakened to opt out.

Shivani Patel, a Jones College Beer Bike coordinator, said the committee will rethink the early morning wake-ups a!er the system.

“When it comes to things like planning, I think we’re gonna have to dive deeper into things like the early morning wake-ups,” said Patel, a junior. “Jones has worked really well with admin in the past to kind of figure out ways to go about some of our really, really strong traditions like night ride … I feel like we might have a little bit more difficulty this year, especially with the hazing policy.”

MICHELLE LEE / THRESHER

WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 2, 2026 • 5

NEWS

Will Rice Chief Justice steps down a week into the new semester ABIGAIL CHIU

NEWS EDITOR

Emmie Casey, the former Will Rice College Chief Justice, announced on Friday she would be resigning from her position, effective immediately. Casey said the increasing workload expected of student leadership in enforcing self-governance had become too much for her schedule.

Casey, a senior, served as CJ during the 2025-26 term and had been elected to a second term in spring 2026.

Casey said she originally decided to run for CJ in her sophomore year because of an interest in student safety.

“It seemed really like something up my alley and interesting, but I also care about student safety, and I feel like one thing that I was noticing was that there wasn’t people at Will Rice that were seeing things and doing things about it, safety-wise, whether that was people following them [into their rooms] or reporting things,” Casey said. “It ended up being a lot more alcohol related than I previously thought, but I mean, I kind of knew that going into it.”

The CJ of each college is responsible for running its college court and enforcing Rice’s alcohol policy.

“I loved it. I loved being CJ, and I still love it,” Casey said. “But I just don’t have enough time anymore for it, and it kind of was getting to a point where people were just kind of expecting me to do things that were not really in the job, and I couldn’t really do those things anymore.”

All student leadership positions in Will Rice are volunteer-based. The official description of the CJ role lists, among others, responsibilities for ensuring compliance with the alcohol policy and Code of Student Conduct and assisting the Rice University Policy Department and the Will Rice Core Team with student welfare and safety issues.

“A lot of the job isn’t definedw. It’s kind of loose, and it doesn’t really say like, oh,

10 minutes before someone has a meeting with student activities, you have to train them because they forgot about it,” Casey said. “It’s a lot of that, and proactively trying to predict before stuff happens that it’s gonna happen.”

Casey is the only CJ in the 2026-27 cohort who also previously served in the role. She said she decided to run again because she enjoyed her first year and knew it was not the most appealing job.

I loved it. I loved being CJ, and I still love it … But I just don’t have enough time anymore for it, and it kind of was getting to a point where people were just kind of expecting me to do things that were not really in the job, and I couldn’t really do those things anymore.

Emmie Casey FORMER WILL RICE CHIEF JUSTICE

“It is not an easy job. Many people are like, ‘No, it’s harder than president.’ I’m like, ‘Yeah, it kind of can be,’” Casey said.

“The list can go on for days of what I do.

Or did.”

Casey listed late-night emergencies, mental health crises, helping students with roommate issues and educating students about drug and alcohol rules among the duties she carried out as CJ. “Lots of students don’t report things, so then, being an ear on the ground and hearing about something, and then either reporting it, or finding someone to support … and you’re not really trained to do all of that,” Casey said. “I’m not a trained

professional in mental health … as well as walking around campus and being like, ‘Ooh, you’re gonna get in big trouble if you do that,’ and trying to explain to people why they can’t smoke in the middle of quad. Like, weed is very illegal in this state.

Please don’t do that.”

Following the overwhelming number of alcohol-related transports and subsequent permanent cancellation of Wiess College’s Night of Decadence party in October 2023, the dean of undergraduates convened an Alcohol Policy Advisory Committee.

The Undergraduate Alcohol Policy was updated.

The CJ is the student leader who is responsible for enforcing the alcohol policy for their college. Casey said there were many instances of having to shut down parties or investigate noise complaints late in the night.

“One thing about the CJ job that they don’t really tell you is that your sleep schedule is going to be totally different every day,” Casey said. “You don’t know when you’re going to have to wake up early or go to bed late to deal with something.”

Will Rice is governed by the Electoral College, which is composed of the following offices: president, external vice president, internal vice president, secretary, treasurer, class representatives, off-campus representative and diversity and inclusion representative. EC works with the core team of the magister and resident associates to govern the college.

“Last year, our president Mary Margaret [Speed] was very helpful, especially late at night, and with these problems, we did it as a dual job, which by no means was her job,” Casey said. “Her job was just kind of to support me.”

Every position on EC is open for election each year, and Casey said Will Rice is experiencing change with new RAs, an unfilled RA spot, new incoming magisters and future renovations.

The Will Rice College quad hosts student events that are overseen by the Chief Justice. Former Chief Justice Emmie Casey stepped down on Friday.

COURTESY EMMIE CASEY Emmie Casey poses in front of Will Rice College flag. She served as Chief Justice for the 2025-26 term before resigning.

“There’s a lot of holes in our student government right now where some people are not really doing their jobs to the full extent as people prior, and a lot of changeover,” Casey said. “Whenever changeover happens, the people are so ready to get out of their job, they don’t teach the next person properly.”

Casey also said she personally provided resources and support to the Chao College CJ, Olivia Seo, who Casey said did not receive any formal training on how to be a CJ. Rice welcomed its largest class ever this year with more than 1,420 new students, and its Momentous strategic plan sets a goal of expanding to 5,200 undergraduate students by 2028.

“No one listens to any communications.

You know, I do that alcohol presentation, and then two hours later, someone asks me a question identical about it,” Casey said. “It is very frustrating, and I think Rice has a big problem with that right now. Like, so many holes and information doesn’t stay.”

MUYIWA OGUNSOLA / THRESHER

WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 2, 2026 • 6

THE RICE THRESHER

EDITORIAL

Pilot proctoring program raises doubts about Rice’s trust in students The Rice Honor System, created by students, dates back to the university’s very founding year. “That it has functioned so well for so long reflects the trust and respect that Rice students show to one another and the University,” wrote President Reggie DesRoches in a letter addressed to the undergraduate community displayed on Rice’s Honor Code website. Since 1912, the Honor Code has explicitly prohibited proctored examinations on the presumption that Rice faculty and administration can reasonably place their confidence in students to act honorably — that is, not cheat.

The piloting of the Proctoring Test Group Program signals an alarming new distrust in students. While the onus once fell on students to report incidents of cheating under the Honor Code, new test proctoring suggests that the administration is reorganizing this structure from the top down, toward a

system that sidesteps student trust in favor of surveillance.

Considering DesRoches’ words — that the Honor Code’s persistence “reflects the trust and respect” between students and university — in light of this longstanding tradition’s potential discontinuance, we doubt this decision reflects anything assuring about how administrators perceive the students they administer.

Simple surveillance ignores the underlying causes of cheating — fear of failure, intense grade pressure and low self-efficacy, for instance — but this is almost entirely beside the point. It is difficult to discern from available data that any purported cheating crisis, let alone one that could reasonably necessitate the end of unproctored exams, is even taking place. In the announcement for the pilot program sent to undergraduates on Thursday, the Honor Council claims that

while fewer than 10 cheating accusations have been reported by students since March 2024, reported instances of in-person cheating have increased meaningfully. The Honor Council assumes many more students cheat than are reported and such cases are currently flying under their radar.

We agree with Jessica Critten, a senior instructional designer at the University of Colorado Denver, who wrote in 2021 that “even if proctoring were extremely effective in discouraging cheating, we have to ask ourselves if it is worth it.” Critten, who advocates teaching practices that “empower students to learn” and “work toward harm reduction,” argues that proctoring programs position students as adversaries and orient instructors toward “punishment, rather than pedagogy.”

Might an attitude toward pedagogy at Rice prefer instead to center empathetic learning

experiences in which students would have no desire to cheat in the first place — “or could not cheat, even if they wanted to,” as Critten suggests? Or, for a university that recently placed No. 10 in Niche’s 2027 Best Colleges in America ranking — which prioritizes academic strength above all else in its methodology — would it be too much of a stretch to imagine an academic environment where mutual respect and understanding are more than a hollow selling point or a vestige of Rice’s past?

Editor’s Note: Thresher editorials are collectively written by the members of the Thresher’s editorial board. Current members include James Cancelarich, Evie Vu, Abigail Chiu, Hongtao Hu, Andrew Rynsburger, Chi Pham, Andersen Pickard and Patrick Shukis.

Chiu recused herself from this editorial due to corresponding coverage in the news section.

KEEPING IT HEALTHY

Cooking yourself for compliments: The dangers of tanning JAKE PESSIN

FOR THE THRESHER Remember that one fair-skinned friend you haven’t seen since finals? The one who was pale as a ghost a%er a two-week bender in a Fondren Library study room? It doesn’t take a detective to know why they look so different this hot summer day: It’s their tan, glowing in the Houston sun.

Unfortunately for them, that tan is the skin’s emergency response to DNA damage.

According to researchers at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health, when ultraviolet radiation penetrates skin cells and begins breaking down their genetic material, the body rushes melanin to the surface as a shield. That golden glow you see is not healthy; it is their body trying to defend against an attack.

The health consequences of deliberate tanning, especially indoor tanning, are pretty clear.

In December 2025, cancer researchers writing in the journal Science Advances found that indoor tanning can result in 185% increased odds of developing melanoma, the most deadly skin cancer.

According to research in the journal Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers & Prevention, even when a tan goes away, the UV damage does not. The dose you absorb today adds to every other time in your life that you spent a little too long in the sun unprotected.

The story that popularized tanning is almost embarrassing in hindsight. Before the 1920s, pale skin was viewed as a symbol of status and wealth across most of Europe and the U.S. Then, in 1923, Coco Chanel returned from a Mediterranean cruise with

an accidental tan, and her look went viral.

The same Chanel, according to researchers at Harvard Business School, would go on to become a Nazi intelligence agent in World War II. We didn’t inherit her ideology, but we did inherit her aesthetic, and our skin has not stopped paying for it.

Part of why tanning has remained culturally relevant for over 100 years is because it is, to some extent, addictive.

Although evidence is limited, research in the Environmental Health Perspectives journal found that UV exposure triggers endorphin release, causing a real, mild high. When people stop tanning, some report symptoms of depression, fueling demand for tanning addiction treatments.

If we are able to look past the charm of an a%ernoon lounge chair tanning session, the biology says something uncomfortable:

The thing we find attractive is the injury.

While other cancer-causing practices like smoking have largely fallen out of fashion, tanning remains unquestionably popular.

Why is this?

In reality, your friend’s glow is their body’s burglar alarm going off. They will probably do it again next month, partly because it feels relaxing and partly because everyone around them has agreed to call the alarm beautiful. And until we stop celebrating this practice, the carcinogenic cycle will continue.

If you want the tanned look, self-tanner has improved dramatically over the years and carries no cancer risk. No matter how much time you spend outside, especially in the blistering Houston summer heat, wear a high-SPF sunscreen. It’s not worth risking your life for a tan.

Jake Pessin is a Chao College sophomore studying sports medicine and serves as the chair of RSA’s Student Health Services Commission. He is passionate about making health and nutrition science practical, accessible and useful for all.

OPINIONS

WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 2, 2026 • 7

EYE ON ACCESSIBILITY

EDITORIAL STAFF

O-Week accessibility becomes an afterthought COLETTE MINTON

THRESHER STAFF

In recent years, major strides have made Orientation Week more accessible for everyone. This year, in a surprising and disappointing shi%, accessibility suffered universitywide. Inoperative automatic doors, the absence of O-Week coordinator golf carts and the discontinuation of the sensitivity forms made O-Week less welcoming and inclusive for students with disabilities.

Something as fundamental as automatic doors should have been functional during adviser training. But two weeks later, during the first weeks of classes, I still struggle with automatic doors that do not open automatically.

This was especially challenging during O-Week, as most of the North colleges lacked functioning automatic doors.

At a time when advisers and O-Week coordinators work tirelessly to help the incoming class gain a sense of belonging at Rice, some new students could not even enter and exit their residential colleges independently.

Another aspect of physical accessibility that fell short this year was the lack of golf carts. In previous years, each set of O-Week coordinators borrowed a golf cart to make transportation easier on top of their many responsibilities. The golf carts were also used to help students and advisers with mobility issues attend the many events at Tudor Fieldhouse and other buildings far from residential colleges.

Courtney Nelson, a Martel College O-Week coordinator, wrote in an email to the Thresher that this year, golf carts were not distributed to each college, with the primary reasoning being alleged instances of “improper usage.”

The golf carts were a significant part of my O-Week experience, as I did not have my wheelchair last August. Had this policy been in place last year, my first week at Rice would have been one of increased pain and exhaustion, which could have tainted an otherwise formative and memorable experience.

Given the loud, involved nature of many of the fun events during O-Week, by filling out the voluntary sensitivity form, new students were able to communicate needs like earplugs or hairnets before even

* Indicates Editorial Board member James Cancelarich* Editor-in-Chief Evie Vu* Managing Editor NEWS Abigail Chiu* Editor Toby Chou Asst. Editor Ruby Gao Asst. Editor Lina Kang Asst. Editor OPINION Andrew Rynsburger* Editor FEATURES Amelia Davis Editor London Frey Crossword Editor ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT Chi Pham* Editor Cora Wareh Asst. Editor SPORTS Andersen Pickard* Editor Patrick Shukis* Editor Keya Patel Asst. Editor

KONSTANTIN SAVVON / THRESHER O-Week advisers welcome new students at Duncan College. This O-Week saw the largest incoming class in Rice’s history. setting foot on campus. To my surprise, the matriculating class of 2026 was not given this opportunity.

As Rice continues to grow, with each incoming class larger than the last, it cannot treat accessibility as an afterthought, nor can it eliminate accommodations for the sake of expediency.

According to one O-Week coordinator, because “the new hazing guidelines” require the disclosure of all events to new students, First Year Programs deemed the forms “no longer necessary,” and even prohibited O-Week coordinators from sending them out. Although coordinators made it clear they had received no information on noise sensitivities or disabilities, the decision to discontinue the forms remained in place.

Without this information, advisers are put in a difficult position to properly accommodate their new students, as it puts

the onus on new students to communicate their sensitivities in person during the nonstop schedule of academic planning, presentations and activities. The forms also gave O-Week coordinators a better understanding of how many students were likely to attend the alternative programming for events like Rice Rally and Mock Bike, so they could allocate resources more effectively.

Taken together, it seems FYP opted for heavy-handed solutions to problems that, like all things concerning students with disabilities, are nuanced. While the logistical challenges of O-Week are immense, these changes are genuinely damaging to the experience of incoming students.

As Rice continues to grow, with each incoming class larger than the last, it cannot treat accessibility as an a%erthought, nor can it eliminate accommodations for the sake of expediency. O-Week advisers and coordinators devote their summer to ensuring new students feel at home and their transition into college is as smooth as possible. It is the university’s responsibility to do the same, assuring all students, regardless of ability, can fully participate in the experience meant to welcome them to Rice.

Colette Minton is a Martel College sophomore studying mechanical engineering. Her experiences with physical and invisible disabilities give her unique insight into the shortcomings of Rice’s infrastructure. Through this column, she aims to spread awareness and improve accessibility at Rice.

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THE RICE THRESHER

8 • WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 2 , 2026

Whooo’s reading what? Students’ summer reads VERONICA YANG

THRESHER STAFF

While doomscrolling and shrinking attention spans have threatened this generation’s ability to focus on printed word, Rice undergraduates spent their summer proving that the literary crisis is not real — at least within the hedges.

“The Anthropocene Reviewed: Essays on a Human-Centered Planet” by John Green John Green’s recent appearance as keynote speaker at Rice University’s undergraduate commencement ceremony may have prompted students to revisit the familiar voice they know from his Crash Course videos. Adapted from his popular podcast, Green’s essay collection rates various aspects within our planet (from the QWERTY keyboard to Canadian geese) on a five-star scale.

The humor and open-hearted exploration of the contradictions in humanity ultimately capture the optimistic wonders of being human, making it the perfect read to set your mind right for the rest of the day. Green dives into the contradictions in humanity and offers a celebration of falling in love with our world.

Both Shyla Jogi, a Hanszen College sophomore, and Angella Zhao, a Jones College junior, picked up the collection over break. For Zhao, the book’s charm comes from Green’s ability to turn something mundane into something meaningful.

“Written by one of the funniest people I know, it felt like listening to him turn his most random tangents on Diet Dr Peppers and sunsets into incredibly relevant and meaningful ideas,” Zhao said.

“Parable of the Sower” by Octavia E. Butler Set in a California devastated by climate change and inflation, Octavia E. Butler’s novel follows the story of Lauren Olamina, who possesses hyperempathy

NHU CHU / THRESHER and creates a new belief system called Earthseed. It tackles themes like global change and racial tension through presenting a fictional future where adaptability is the key to staying alive.

“I appreciated how it confronted the question of realistically looking towards the future during apocalyptic times and building community in such a di$cult situation,” said Kate Dawson, a Chao College junior.

“When Breath Becomes Air” by Paul Kalanithi This book was written by a 36-yearold neurosurgeon facing a terminal lung cancer diagnosis. It is a moving memoir that reflects on the meaning of life and depicts true doctor-patient relationships in the face of mortality.

Amid the grind of MCAT preparation and premed stress, reading this book can serve as a reminder of why premed

students chose that path in the first place. To everyone else, it can provide a glimpse into the world of medicine as both a patient and a doctor.

“It’s almost a tragedy [seeing] someone who spent his entire life building a dream career now facing the di$cult reality of potentially letting that life dissolve due to something beyond control,” said Sehyun Jung, a Baker College senior.

“We should appreciate everything happening to us right now without being so locked into the premed dreams we have,” Jung said.

The “Mistborn” series by Brandon Sanderson Brandon Sanderson’s epic fantasy saga was a popular choice among Owls this summer. This dystopian novel takes place on Scadrial, a planet where an oppressed working class is enslaved by

an immortal tyrant who has ruled for a thousand years.

The trilogy follows Vin, a homeless child, who, along with a crew of thieves, pulls off high-stakes quests to overthrow the godlike ruler. The story creates an intricate magic system where characters can harness superhuman powers.

These books offer Rice students an escape into a world of political intrigue, rebellion and complex magic systems — or perhaps inspiration for their own writing. Or even a guide on how to depose a particularly despotic professor?

“He’s really good at pulling things that you don’t expect, [with] three other things that were surprises hidden in plain sight, it’s uncanny how he does it,” said Cayden Chang, a Sid Richardson College junior. “I can’t imagine a person who reached the ending that didn’t think it was awesome.”

Professor’s brain research earns Sloan fellowship RISHI ANARKAT

THRESHER STAFF

Twelve neurons.

That is all it took for the lab of bioengineer Jerzy Szablowski to produce a signal detectable by technology.

Szablowski, an associate professor of bioengineering at Rice, was named a 2026 Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellow in chemistry. He is one of 126 researchers selected for the fellowship, whose winners receive $75,000 to support their research over two years.

Cynthia Reinhart-King, the bioengineering department chair, nominated Szablowski for the fellowship.

“Jerzy stood out because he is defining his field,” Reinhart-King said. “If you look at his papers, he’s really the person who’s creating this field. There aren’t any people ahead of him.”

One focus of Szablowski’s lab is finding ways to observe molecular activity inside the brain without taking tissue from it.

“We’ve developed those synthetic serum markers. We call them released markers of activity, RMAs,” Szablowski said.

“The idea is that you can monitor the activity of the neurons, or gene expression, using a blood test. What we do is deliver gene therapy, and then the gene therapy

produces a protein that exits from the neurons, passes through the blood-brain barrier into the blood and circulates for long periods of time, at which point we can pick it up,” Szablowski said.

Reinhart-King said researchers can already collect and interpret the brain’s electrical signals, but accessing molecular information in real time has remained di$cult.

“We’ve been able to take electrical signals from the brain and interpret what they’re doing in real time,” Reinhart-King said. “But in terms of what’s happening at the molecular level, at the protein level, that hasn’t been possible, and his work is enabling that.”

Behnaam Aazhang, director of the Rice Neuroengineering Initiative and J.S. Abercrombie Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering, described Szablowski as a researcher drawn to di$cult questions.

“He is one of those engineer-scientists who thinks big, and he only focuses on big problems,” Aazhang said. “He takes projects that are high-risk, high-reward, and that is incredibly important for the field, to be able to solve problems that others do not touch.”

Szablowski is also designing technologies that can be reused to treat diseases.

“If you are treating epilepsy, you have

KONSTANTIN SAVVON / THRESHER Jerzy Szablowki was awarded a Sloan fellowship for his brain research. He is an associate professor of bioengineering. to shut down the neurons at the center of seizures,” Szablowski said. “But if you want to treat obesity, then you can shut down the neurons in the feeding center.

It’s the same kind of mechanism, but just the location makes the difference in what you’re treating. That’s the platform aspect.”

Szablowski plans to use part of the

Sloan funding to develop what he calls a mechanism-agnostic drug discovery program.

“We’re trying to find a way to treat diseases that you can’t understand,” Szablowski said. “There are so many diseases that people have been trying to understand for decades, let’s say Alzheimer’s disease or ALS, and there still isn’t a good answer.”

Reinhart-King said Szablowski’s work could eventually help researchers study neurological diseases while patients are still living.

“When his technology is successful, it’s going to open the door to understanding things like Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s, early disease onset and effects of stroke,” Reinhart-King said. “It could transform our ability to treat neurological diseases.”

For Szablowski, the larger goal extends beyond creating one new drug or diagnostic test.

“The big picture is that we are trying to see how we can restructure the way that we come up with new therapeutics and how we evaluate them,” Szablowski said. “All our lab is trying to do is find a way to make therapeutics better, and not to find specific drugs, but to redevelop the process to make this whole drug discovery and therapeutic discovery process more e$cient.”

WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 2, 2026 • 9

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17 Just 18 Savoriness 19 ___ Buttigieg 20 Loafed around 22 2010 ballerina horror !lm 24 Chemical in paint thinner 26 Precedes “angle” or “cycle” 27 Longest mountain range 31 Chalamet’s occupation 35 Follows “hall” or “boarding” 39 Completed 40 A woodwind 41 Testaments to one’s dedication: _____, _____, & _____ 44 Merry 45 EGOT leader 46 ~45 mL 47 HQ for Samsung and LG 48 Light beam 50 ___ chi 52 Latex, processed 57 A time to view blossoms 63 Take care of 64 Black and white cookie 65 Cover 67 Dollars per hour 68 Dr. Gorman’s title 69 Concluding symbol 70 ____ Saint Laurent 71 Instagram and Block Blast 72 _____ Winfrey 73 “Before,” before

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Harvest Moist El día anterior Occasion for downward dogs “___, I’d win.”

From patient to founder: A student brings hospital play kit nonprofit to campus KAMILA EL MOSELHY

THRESHER STAFF

For 15 years, Parnika Shankar could eat whatever she wanted. Then, in April 2022, that changed overnight.

Severe food and water intolerances left her able to count the foods she could safely eat on one hand and put her in a cycle of near-monthly emergency room visits for dehydration.

Hospital rooms had started to blur together, each one part of the same routine.

“Especially during these times, the seemingly little things make the biggest difference,” said Shankar, a Lovett College junior.

The day before her SAT, the little thing that changed everything for her was a Project Sunshine play kit waiting in an otherwise familiar hospital room.

“I can still see the basketball hoop and feel the excitement,” Shankar said. “This was where my story with Project Sunshine began.”

Project Sunshine is a national nonprofit that brings volunteer-run play programming to hospitalized children and their families. Shankar’s encounter with one of its kits in the middle of her health crisis led her to establish a Rice University chapter of the organization, where she now serves as founder and chapter leader.

Shankar said starting a chapter, rather than simply volunteering with an existing one, came from wanting to pay forward what she had experienced firsthand.

“Studies have repeatedly shown that children who receive psychosocial support, especially through creative play, recover more quickly and achieve better overall outcomes,” Shankar said. “Recognizing that children are meant to play isn’t optional, it’s essential.”

The chapter’s growth shows in its numbers. At an April kit-making event, more than 60 volunteers packed 300 kits for delivery to partner facilities across the country. The kits go to pediatric patients and their siblings in hospitals across Texas and nationwide.

COURTESY OF PARNIKA SHANKAR Students assemble play kits during a volunteering event for Project Sunshine. The program’s Rice chapter was founded by Lovett College junior Parnika Shankar.

The effort was led by an executive board that includes Naisha Shah, a Will Rice College junior; Riya Yarlagadda, a Lovett senior; Sruthi Panja, a Lovett junior; and Riley Varn, a Sid Richardson College junior.

In January, the chapter partnered with Great Wolf Lodge to build 2,500 additional play kits. That momentum continues this semester with two new initiatives.

The chapter partnered with Little Words Project on a custom “Play Heals” bracelet, available through September, with $5 from every purchase going toward activity kits and family support programs.

Additionally, on Sept. 11, the chapter is hosting an event at a Great Wolf Lodge in the Greater Houston area, offering discounted half-day water park passes with proceeds supporting Project Sunshine’s programs across Texas hospitals.

For Shah, the chapter’s secretary, the appeal of joining Project Sunshine was the chance for a deeper connection with patients.

“A lot of patient-volunteer interactions can feel surface-level, but Project Sunshine gives you the opportunity to really get to know someone beyond their diagnosis,” Shah said.

As someone who hopes to become a physician, she said the club has given her a space to practice recognizing the person behind the diagnosis.

One memory has stuck with her: seeing a room of finished play kits after a packing event and imagining the kids opening them.

“It is such a fun, low-stress way to get involved, meet people and make a real impact,” Shah said. “You do not need any specific background or experience.”

The chapter’s faculty sponsor Colette

Nicolaou, an assistant teaching professor of psychological sciences, has guided the club since its early days. Nicolaou, who received the Center for Civic Leadership’s Changemaker Mentor Award in 2026 for her support of Project Sunshine, said the recognition belongs less to her than to Shankar.

“Parnika works tirelessly to leave a mark on every Rice student who joins Project Sunshine, and on thousands of hospitalized children and their families,” Nicolaou said.

As the chapter heads into its next year, Nicolaou said she has no doubt Shankar’s influence will keep extending outward.

“In the same way that she was touched by this organization as a child, I have no doubt that because of her efforts there are countless children who will follow in her footsteps,” Nicolaou said.

10 • WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 2 , 2026

THE RICE THRESHER

11 • WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 2, 2026

THE RICE THRESHER

‘Citizen’ author to read from new book at Rice on Sept. 14 HONGTAO HU

SPECIAL INVESTIGATIONS EDITOR The writer Claudia Rankine, known for her genre-defying interrogations of race in America through her poetry and plays, is coming to Rice on Sept. 14 to read from her newest book “Triage.”

In her eighth book, the MacArthur fellow has turned her signature blend of !ction, poetry and memoir — “American lyrics” — onto the topic of kinship and survival.

“Triage” charts the troubled yet evolving friendship between the narrator and her friend, referred to as the “theorist,” as they mourn and quarrel over the actions one should take in times of immense loss.

As one of the 11 authors in literary organization Inprint Houston’s 2026-27 Margarett Root Brown Reading Series, Rankine will enter into conversation about her work with Phillip B. Williams, a creative writing professor at Rice.

Rankine’s oeuvre stands out, Williams said, in how she simultaneously challenges and expands the possibility of the communicative word.

“In Rankine’s work, I learn how to read the line, between the line, beneath and behind it,” Williams wrote in an email to the Thresher.

In “Triage,” the never-ending spectres of disaffection, oppression and loneliness are answered by the necessary — and often insufficient — patience we need from others, Williams wrote.

“Sometimes the silence that pummels us into surrender/submission/hiding is our own,” Williams wrote. “It wants to show how the scabs that document our past wounds sometimes cause more harm than they protect.”

Giuseppe Taurino, Inprint’s executive director, said the motifs of collapse and community stood out to him in Rankine’s work.

“We’re at a place in time where … our means of communication and relationship is strained and fractured in some ways,”

COURTESY GRAYWOLF PRESS & DIRK SKIBA “Triage” is a genre-defying, hybrid book that blends personal memory and prose narration with critical theory and visual art. The author, Claudia Rankine, will be reading selections from the work at Rice on Sept. 14.

Taurino said. “What we’re seeing is a response to that multifacetedness that culture brings to the foreground each and every day.”

“Triage” marks the return of Rankine to Houston. After her brief teaching stint in the University of Houston’s creative writing program in the 2000s, Inprint brought her

back in 2019 for her play “The White Card.”

Noting this, Taurino said her second appearance at Inprint is another chance for the audience to grapple with the “unpinnable” quality of her work.

“Returning to a space at any point in time — whether there’s a week, a month or a decade in between allows for the kind of

rediscovery — that’s the thing that life is made of,” Taurino said.

This event will be held at 7:30 p.m. on Sept. 14 in the Brockman Hall for Opera.

According to Catherine Lu, Inprint’s communications director, students can register for free until the day of the reading on Inprint’s website.

Film: Houston weekly screens and scenes: Sept. 2 the reality of their lives, rich with humor and tragedy, unfolds in the fictional town of Chinquapin Parish, Louisiana. “Steel Magnolias” plays at Rooftop Cinema Club Uptown Houston on Thursday.

“Some Like It Hot” (dir. Billy Wilder) This comedy classic stars Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon as jazz musicians who disguise themselves in drag after witnessing a mob massacre.

On the run in Prohibition-era Chicago, the pair joins an all-female band under false pretenses and later befriends Sugar Kane (Marilyn Monroe), who plays ukulele. Inevitably, the pair begins attracting unwanted attention. “Some Like It Hot” plays Friday through Sunday at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, in honor of Monroe’s centennial year.

HAI-VAN HOANG / THRESHER

CHI PHAM

A&E EDITOR

Following a stint of comedic roles in the early ’80s — including her acting debut in “9 to 5” and the musicals “The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas” and “Rhinestone” — the late Dolly Parton solidified her movie star status with her dramatic portrayal of Truvy Jones in “Steel Magnolias” (1989). The ensemble

drama screens in Houston this week.

“Steel Magnolias” (dir. Herbert Ross) A tight-knit circle of no-nonsense Southern women gathers at the local beauty parlor of Truvy (Dolly Parton).

Sally Field stars as M’Lynn, the fiercely protective mother of bride-to-be Shelby Eatenton (Julia Roberts), who soon experiences a health scare.

The women grow closer over time as

“Fantastic Planet” (dir. René Laloux) René Laloux’s 1973 surrealist animation is a classic of the science fiction genre, depicting tiny humanlike slaves called Oms who rebel against the Draags, the giant blue alien rulers of Ygam.

Terr, the film’s narrator, escapes from his Draag captor and joins a group of radical Oms resisting their oppression.

“Fantastic Planet” won the Special Award at the Cannes Film Festival in 1973 and remains a timeless political allegory for colonialism and totalitarianism. It plays at the River Oaks Theatre on Saturday.

“TAMALA 2010: A Punk Cat in Space” (dir. t.o.L) Drawing influence from both Hello Kitty and Thomas Pynchon’s “The Crying of Lot 49,” this psychedelic sci-fi anime centers on the pint-sized kitty Tamala, a resident of Meguro City on Cat Earth.

Tamala escapes into space and crashes near Hate City, where she learns she may descend from an ancient cat cult with ties to the omnipresent corporation controlling her home city. The film derides the oversaturation of modern consumer culture: a giant Colonel Sanders even stalks the streets of Meguro City. “TAMALA 2010” plays at the River Oaks Theatre on Thursday.

“White Chicks” (dir. Keenen Ivory Wayans) Curtis and Lemmon are not the only drag-clad duo gracing Houston theaters this week. “White Chicks” stars realworld brothers as Black FBI agents Marcus Copeland (Marlon Wayans) and Kevin Copeland (Shawn Wayans), who go undercover as white women.

To foil a kidnapping plot, the brothers disguise themselves as the wealthy blonde heiresses assigned to their protection. No one seems to mind their rather artificial appearance — Marcus is even romantically pursued by a basketball player (Terry Crews). “White Chicks” plays at Rooftop Cinema Club Uptown Houston on Monday.

12 • WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 2, 2026

THE RICE THRESHER

Review: Olivia Rodrigo’s new album turns purple dark

COURTESY GEFFEN RECORDS “you seem pretty sad for a girl so in love” marks Olivia Rodrigo’s third consecutive No. 1 album in the United States. The album confronts an uncomfortable truth: Love and sadness are not opposites.

WENSHI CHEN

THRESHER STAFF

The title of Olivia Rodrigo’s third album — “you seem pretty sad for a girl so in love” — marks a departure from the all-caps, one-word declarations of her 2021 debut “SOUR” and 2023 release “GUTS.” Her choice of title this time around confronts the uncomfortable truth at the record’s heart: Love and sadness are not opposites.

Rodrigo described the album in a Dazed interview as the story of her !rst “adult relationship.” But before a single note is heard, the cover art has already begun telling that story.

Wearing a delicate pink dress, Rodrigo soars on a swing beneath an endless blue sky. An image of this kind would usually signal freedom, innocence and joy. Yet, she hangs upside down, suspended in a world where gravity no longer behaves as expected. It is a quiet but powerful metaphor: We can have everything we thought we wanted and still !nd ourselves ungrounded.

The album, much like its cover, invites us into a love story only to gently turn it upside down.

A sense of inversion shapes every corner of the album. Following a rumored breakup, Rodrigo rewrote much of the project, allowing the songs to trace her evolving understanding of the relationship. The exhilarating !rst spark of love is followed through to its later forms: obsession, uncertainty, distance, heartbreak and !nally self-rediscovery.

Unlike her earlier angst-!lled breakup anthems, this release lingers in the quieter moments of a relationship: the silence that settles before either person admits something has changed, and the strange loneliness that can exist even when holding someone’s hand. Rodrigo has always possessed an uncanny ability to crystallize ineffable emotions, but here, she writes with a new patience and emotional clarity.

Joy and grief, hope and disillusionment are allowed to occupy the same space. This is an album that understands love as the uneasy coexistence of many feelings.

The !rst half is devoted to the intoxicating high of falling in love, when exhilaration and obsession are almost indistinguishable — love itself seems capable of bending reality.

It begins with the glittering synth-pop rush of “drop dead,” where she delivers one of the album’s most striking opening lines: “Kiss me and I might drop dead.” The declaration is theatrical, almost absurd, yet perfectly believable in the heightened emotional landscape of new romance.

Comparing her lover to the angels painted across the ceilings of the Palace of Versailles, Rodrigo places them on an impossibly high pedestal. Infatuation becomes something almost sacred. The production sparkles with chamber-pop elegance, mirroring the dizzying feeling of discovering someone who makes the ordinary suddenly luminous.

Yet even in these euphoric moments, Rodrigo quietly plants the seeds of the unraveling to come. The line “Pisces and a Gemini / But I think we might go really nice together” initially lands as a charming nod to contemporary dating culture, but it also hints at the desire to believe compatibility can be willed into existence.

Throughout the album’s !rst act, love is painted as a hope sustained by imagination as much as reality.

The intensity of such hope reaches its peak on “stupid song.” Beginning with a restrained piano, the song slowly sheds its composure before bursting into an exhilarating sprint. Rodrigo’s voice climbs higher as she confesses that she feels “right,” “wrong” and “totally insane.” It is the sound of someone losing control, but delightfully so.

Then, as if catching its breath, the album drifts into the dreamlike “honeybee.”

Rodrigo swallows the bitter pill that love can transform your life, but it cannot rescue you from yourself.

Floating on warm, atmospheric production, Rodrigo trades overwhelming passion for quiet devotion. She sings with a fragility as though she is afraid that speaking too loudly might shatter the moment.

She has described it as a song !t for a wedding, which makes perfect sense: It is a love song with an undercurrent of uncertainty beneath its expression of total

devotion.

While the relationship has only just begun, it has already started to reveal the cracks beneath its foundation.

That transition begins with the restless pairing of “maggots for brains” and “u + me = <3.” The former wraps yearning in an irresistibly buoyant melody, and the latter leans into shimmering retro dream pop.

Together, the songs feel like the last rays of sunlight before the storm — one that arrives on “my way.”

Driven by abrasive synths and Rodrigo’s confrontational vocal delivery, the track abandons the dreamy haze of the album’s opening in favor of jealousy and emotional apprehension. At this point, love no longer feels effortless.

The album’s emotional fulcrum, however, is “purple.” “I melt with you, your red and my blue / Now I see the world in purple,” Rodrigo sings as a confession that she can no longer distinguish where her own identity ends and her partner’s begins.

The song’s construction is breathtaking: Rodrigo’s lead vocal is layered with miniature voices that echo and intertwine, as though multiple versions of herself are trying and failing to remain intact.

Beneath them, the percussion hovers between the racing pulse of infatuation and the tightening chest of panic. Just as the song seems ready to explode, everything collapses into a queasy whisper: “Melt with you till it all turns black.” It is the exact moment the album turns itself inside out.

One of Rodrigo’s greatest strengths as a songwriter is her ability to compress the entire lifespan of a relationship into a handful of verses. For a generation raised on stories promising that love should last forever, Rodrigo’s songs offer another lesson: The most meaningful relationships are the ones that change you before they fade.

The album’s second half embraces the realization that love does not !x everything.

In the standout single “the cure,” Rodrigo frames love as medicine, singing of intrusive thoughts and emotional wounds as toxins running through her bloodstream. Yet the song’s simple revelation is heartbreaking: Her partner’s love will “never be the cure.”

The tragedy is not that her relationship failed. It is that even at its most exhilarating, it could never repair the parts of herself that she hoped someone else would heal.

Rodrigo swallows the bitter pill that love can transform your life, but it cannot rescue you from yourself.

Love begins to resemble a chronic condition rather than a fairy tale in the tracks that follow. Then comes the album’s masterpiece: “less.”

Overshadowed in its public reception by the record’s more visible singles, it is nevertheless one of Rodrigo’s !nest compositions. Reduced almost entirely to piano and voice, the song reaches its emotional climax with the devastating refrain “If loving me means letting go and wishing me the best / Then I guess / I wish, I wish, I wish you loved me less.”

Top Track: ‘less’

Few lyricists capture mature heartbreak as acutely as Rodrigo does here. Being left gently, respectfully, even lovingly, hurts no less than being left cruelly.

Rodrigo’s closer, “cigarette smoke,” circles back to the tenderness of “honeybee” and the dissolution of “purple,” allowing memories once bathed in warmth to darken with time. Like the smell of cigarette smoke lingering long after someone has left the room, love leaves behind traces that refuse to vanish.

The arrangement builds patiently toward an inevitable catharsis, only to collapse moments before release.

As the relationship ends like an echo, the !nal notes slowly dissolve into silence, and Rodrigo leaves behind the album’s enduring realization that some loves never truly leave us.

Great heartbreak albums often promise closure. This one never does. Rodrigo writes to understand what remains after it has ended. There is only the quiet courage of telling the truth as she experienced it — messy, contradictory, devastating and deeply human.

So when the !nal note fades, the album leaves us suspended much like its cover: somewhere between the sky and ground, joy and grief, memory and possibility.

Perhaps that’s where love has always existed, between holding on and letting go.

WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 2, 2026 • 13

ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT

Review: Nolan’s ‘The Odyssey’ sings to those who listen CORA WAREH

ASST. A&E EDITOR I sing of a harrowing journey to the nearest IMAX projector, a 2026 film that is causing classicists to resort to cyberbullying and the epic poet Homer’s legacy of “Somebody get these beggars out of here” memes. (My song includes mild spoilers.)

O Muse, help me come up with a take on Nolan’s “The Odyssey” that won’t make my Greek professor think I’m stupid.

Odysseus’ story, shot entirely on ultrahigh-resolution IMAX film, is introduced

by Houston-born rapper Travis Scott, who plays a bard: “A face / a fleet / a war / a man / a thought / a trick / a trick to break the walls of Troy / and burn it screaming to the ground.”

Hearing the bard’s poetry, punctuated by his staff hitting the table he stands on, it’s hard not to be excited. The tradition of oral storytelling is alive!

A rugged Matt Damon plays Odysseus, who is just trying to get himself and his crew home safely after winning the Trojan War. The circumstances naturally demand that the men’s goals are simple: food, shelter, sleep and good winds. Behavior that the witch Circe (Samantha Morton) later condemns as piggish could be understandable, and at least Odysseus is willing to think outside the box to achieve the same goals.

However, by the time the victors got to the Cyclops’ cave, I was kind of rooting for the one-eyed giant (Bill Irwin). The starstudded cast’s acting talent is wasted on Nolan’s dialogue, which just doesn’t feel realistic. Cutting key moments from the original text leaves the title character’s personality a question mark.

In the poem, Odysseus says his name is “Nobody” so that when the Cyclops cries to other Cyclopes for help against

the Nobody attacking him, he isn’t taken seriously.

As he leaves, Homer’s Odysseus gives his real name. Thanks to his boasting, the Cyclops knows who he is and curses his voyage.

Homer uses dialogue to move his story forward while letting his characters explain who they are, whereas Nolan tends to do only one of these at a time.

In the movie, the Cyclops has more aura than anyone on screen with it, perhaps because he gets to eat people instead of struggling through his lines.

As Odysseus sails toward Ithaca, minus a few crew members, his wife Penelope (Anne Hathaway) waits for him there, sitting behind a screen as suitors feast and drink, enabled by “Zeus’ law,” which is Christianized in this retelling.

Penelope promises to choose a new husband when she finishes the burial shroud she is working on, but undoes her weaving each night, as we find out from the suitor Antinous (Robert Pattinson).

The screen through which the audience primarily views Penelope isn’t just physical. Instead of seeing Penelope as she is, we see her through the eyes of male characters. Even the secret about what she’s doing with her loom is revealed by a man. When she yells “I want Odysseus,” we feel for her, but we’re distracted by concern for the son (Tom Holland) she just snapped at.

And it isn’t just female characters that the audience might feel disconnected from. We learn a lot of what we know about Odysseus through his recollection to the goddess Calypso (Charlize Theron).

In Nolan’s world, viewing a character through someone else’s eyes often puts the audience at a distance rather than bringing us in. But even if it’s unfair, it’s up to the audience to bridge that gap.

While the film is hampered by some of its creative choices, seeing Homer’s “Odyssey” on screen is still powerful.

Watching the prophet Tiresias (James Remar) drink sacrificial blood was a visceral experience — especially while I was sipping a cherry Slurpee from concessions.

I didn’t understand this iteration of Odysseus’ motivations for wanting to hear the siren song, but I still felt the tension when he sailed past. And with the help of the melodic vocalizations that synced up with Odysseus’ homecoming, I started rooting for him truly and completely, if a little late.

It is possible that Nolan, like Odysseus with the Trojan Horse, is using a cheap trick. The film is told through several stories within stories, which makes it easier for this “Odyssey” to constantly rewrite itself, getting audiences more and more on board. It covers up past mistakes, tacking on near the end that Odysseus feels guilty for massacring Troy.

Instead of confronting the issue of slavery, it has the good guys use the word “servant” and the bad guys use the word “slave” to describe people in the same labor conditions, as translator Emily Wilson hints at in her aforementioned review for the London Review of Books.

This film is well-intentioned, but also quick to take the easy out when it gets the opportunity. I’m not necessarily mad, because it can be really convincing.

It isn’t Nolan’s job to reproduce the poem exactly or clean the blood off its pages. His adaptation should be judged by what it makes audiences feel, and it made me feel something.

It doesn’t take a creative genius to

COURTESY UNIVERSAL PICTURES The goddess Athena (Zendaya) protects Odysseus (Matt Damon) on his journey home after the Trojan War. Nolan’s “The Odyssey” was released this summer. make modern audiences like Homer’s “Odyssey,” especially not with Zendaya playing Athena. Still, I’m glad somebody did it. My advice is not to take it too seriously: Worry about getting enough popcorn to last you the nearly three-hour runtime, not about how fancy your local theater’s projector is.

If you love the movie, it will probably be because you’re good-humored about it. If you hate it, you just might be smarter and more discerning than the rest of us. But it’s okay to unplug your ears and listen to the song.

Review: Charli xcx confronts fame, fears in ‘Music, Fashion, Film’

COURTESY ATLANTIC RECORDS The cover of “Music, Fashion, Film” features John Cale, Marc Jacobs and Martin Scorsese. The film explores Charli xcx’s response to her brat era fame.

LILY HARVEY

THRESHER STAFF With the release of “brat,” British pop star Charli xcx’s bright green, messy party-girl aesthetic gained immense popularity online, sparking a cultural movement known as “Brat Summer” amid a career high.

Since Brat Summer, Charli xcx has remained in the spotlight, headlining various shows, receiving major brand deals and even making a splash in the film world with her 2026 mockumentary “The Moment” and “Wuthering Heights” soundtrack.

In her new album “Music, Fashion, Film,” Charli xcx reacts to her brat-era fame, breaking down her persona and questioning what it means to be an artist in the public eye today. Though she swaps her typical hyperpop beats for slower, rock-inspired sounds, the writer behind this album is the same introspective artist who wrote “I think about it all the time” — a song off “brat” reflecting on her unease

about family planning — and “how i’m feeling now” — her 2020 album capturing feelings of isolation and self-discovery amid the COVID-19 lockdown.

At the same time, she is cynical and unapologetic. On “SS26,” the album’s second track, Charli xcx claims that we as a society are “walkin’ on a runway that goes straight to hell.” The tracks that follow spiral in self-disgust and panic before the artist ultimately revels in her mistakes and decides that making art is what makes her feel alive.

As the title “Wink Wink” suggests, Charli xcx is silly and sarcastic on this single. She begins the song with a series of bluntly delivered lines like, “I used to jump on trampolines with no underwear on / And now I basically just wear trousers.”

Her humor is tongue-in-cheek, proclaiming that she has shed her “bad girl” image and feigning a reformed “angel girl” persona, only to walk back the claim with the line “Wink, wink.” The song’s music video, shot in the Essex countryside,

also plays into this switchup, contrasting the appearance of a mature Charli xcx performing household chores with playful sensuality and mischief.

In an interview with Nicky Reardon, she explained that “Wink Wink” is about people’s desire to place public !gures into boxes. She said she responds by “dancing around in that box.”

Listening to “SS26” feels like driving down the coast and reminiscing about summer. But it is also about the world burning as we turn to the newest aesthetic.

In this apocalyptic yet upbeat track, Charli xcx comments on what it means to be a celebrity in 2026: It is no longer just about the art for artists, who now must navigate brand deals, cancel culture, “notes app apolog[ies]” and politics.

She caricatures the absurdity and super!ciality of the media and declares that she feels uncomfortable using her politics and heritage to further her fame.

The video features Charli xcx as a runway model displaying different personas for her audience. Meanwhile, the dressing room is catching sparks.

Top Track: ‘Persona’

“Persona” is the darker, evil twin of 2024’s “Girl, so confusing.” Catchy, confrontational and funny — the song is about recognizing someone else’s contrived act only because you are putting on a similar one: “You know I see you when you see me.”

It sounds as if Charli xcx is singing to both a rival and herself at once, begging both of them to drop the act. The line “life imitating art” cleverly calls out

listeners’ collective desire for persona and appearance over actual experience. Yes, we are all performative, she suggests.

“Camera” begins with the bold declaration: “It makes me wanna throw my life away.” Charli xcx explores her lovehate relationship with fame. What once felt like “stars” in her eyes has turned into a crippling public pressure to create. In the same confessional fashion as “I think about it all the time,” she spirals, questioning the purpose of what she is doing, if she should be pursuing music at all, or if she is stupid for trying to remain relevant at 34.

At the same time, she notes, there is something truly thrilling about the camera.

It makes her feel “new and undiscovered” and like she is “looking down the barrel of a gun.” At the end of the song, Charli xcx metaphorically pulls the trigger by throwing her fears to the side, “daring to fail and being ugly” because it leaves her “inspired and alive.”

“No One Lasts Forever featuring David Cronenberg” begins as an upbeat dance track but slowly devolves into an existential crisis. Charli xcx questions whether legacy matters if we will not be there to see its fruits. She brings the listener along on a personal realization that the future is uncertain, and that, despite the fame she has achieved, there is still no such thing as an immortal artist.

The song turns momentarily creepy with horror director David Cronenberg’s repeated line: “They are dead, they are gone, no one lasts forever.” However, these lines eventually feel comforting by providing their own kind of freedom.

“Music, Fashion, Film” is cleverly selfconscious and catchy. Charli xcx turns her carefree persona inside out, daring to fail and being ugly in the pursuit of art. But at the same time, it makes a listener wonder: Is this just another layer of a persona?

WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 2, 2026 • 14

Soccer focused on growth as regular season kicks off ANA RIVERA

THRESHER STAFF With a roster that combines a group of newcomers with an experienced senior class, the Owls are using the opening weeks of the NCAA soccer season as an opportunity to build toward a conference championship and tournament run.

“We’re not trying to be the best version of ourselves in August and September,” head coach Brian Lee said. “We’re trying to be the best version of ourselves in November.

How do we build toward that and have a real growth mindset about it?”

For Lee, he said that process starts with getting his new-look roster comfortable playing together. While Rice returns a large senior class, Lee said seven or eight newcomers could make an impact this season.

We’re not trying to be the best version of ourselves in August and September.

We’re trying to be the best version of ourselves in November.

Brian Lee SOCCER HEAD COACH

“I’m excited to integrate a super young team with some key older players,” Lee said. “We have a pretty big senior class, and then a really influential freshman class.”

Senior goalkeeper Kirsten Ruf said this combination has already created a different energy within the program.

“We have a group that genuinely enjoys being around each other, but we also hold each other to a high standard,” Ruf said.

“What feels different this year is the energy and the belief within the group. Everyone has really bought into what we’re trying to accomplish.”

Ruf said the newcomers have brought energy and competition to training while quickly becoming part of the team off the field.

“What has stood out most is how willing they are to learn and compete,” Ruf said.

“They’ve brought a lot of energy to training and have pushed the returning players as well.”

EDITORIAL CARTOON

Lee credited the senior class with helping make that transition easier.

“Our older kids have done a fantastic job welcoming the new kids and really genuinely going out of their way to help the team culture and help everybody feel like they’ve got an important role in the team,” Lee said.

The newcomers will also help Rice replace Leah Chancey, one of the most productive players in program history.

Chancey led the Owls with 10 goals and eight assists last season, finishing her Rice career ranked eighth in program history in both career goals (19) and career points (50).

“We knew we were going to need the influx of attacking talent,” Lee said. “We graduated Leah Chancey, who had a pretty storied career and scored a bunch of key goals for us. One person wasn’t going to replace her.”

One of those additions is sophomore transfer Elliana Ramirez, who appeared in all 20 games for Wake Forest University last season, including both NCAA Tournament matches, and scored two goals.

“Elliana Ramirez from Wake Forest and several of the younger players, I think, are going to have great seasons,” Lee said.

The Owls got an early indication of where their developing roster stands Thursday against No. 3 Vanderbilt University. Rice fell 3-1 after struggling during the opening 45 minutes before responding in the second half.

“I thought not much in the first half was going well, and then a whole lot was going well in the second half,” Lee said. “A couple little tweaks, like we’ve been able to do almost game to game, and I thought our team came alive.”

Ruf said the Owls’ high press helped Rice create opportunities and put pressure on Vanderbilt’s backline.

“We were able to create a lot of chances off our high press and generated opportunities off of crosses into the box, which put a ton of pressure on Vanderbilt’s backline,” Ruf said.

For Lee, the second half showed the young roster it could compete with one of the strongest teams on its schedule.

“The biggest thing to me, coming out of it, is for a kind of new, young team to get the confidence of knowing, ‘Hey, we can play 45 minutes against a top-five team,’” Lee said. “Not even just go toe-to-toe — high press them and really take the game to

“Owl-American”

TOBY NGUYEN / THRESHER “So he left you, too?”

SARAH BRADLEY / THRESHER Freshman midfielder Ava Landstra prepares to play the ball upfield during a soccer game Thursday against No. 3 Vanderbilt University. The Owls have yet to win a game at home. them.”

The next step is extending that performance across an entire game.

“Moving forward, I think capitalizing more on those chances in the box and putting together a dominant 90-minute performance will be key in our next games,” Ruf said.

Lee also pointed to consistency on set pieces and positional defending as areas for improvement.

“Can we put together 90 minutes from the very beginning coming out of the game?” Lee said. “Can we do the little things, be a little more efficient in set pieces and our positional defending for the entirety of the game?”

As the younger players adjust, Rice’s veterans have taken on larger roles. Lee pointed to Ruf and senior midfielders Jordyn Mariam, Lauren Pickup and Elizabet Velkova as several players who have emerged as leaders.

“I’m really big on leading by example and holding myself to a high standard that helps push those around me to be the best version of themselves,” Ruf said. “As a goalkeeper, communication and leadership are naturally a big part of my position, but I also think leadership happens off the field.”

That leadership has helped create the accountability Ruf said is central to the team’s identity.

“The biggest expectation we have for each other is to show up every day ready to compete and to be a good teammate,” Ruf said. “Brian has really emphasized being a good teammate, holding each other accountable, and stacking days.”

While Rice is still working toward a

complete 90-minute performance, Lee believes the roster has the potential to play for a championship by the end of the season.

“I think it’s a reasonable target for them to be playing the last game of the year to win a conference championship, be that regular season and/or the tournament,” Lee said.

What feels different this year is the energy and the belief within the group.

Everyone has really bought into what we’re trying to accomplish.

Kirsten Ruf SENIOR GOALKEEPER

Ruf shares those expectations but said success will also be defined by the Owls’ growth throughout the season.

“We want to compete for a conference championship and put ourselves in a position to play in the NCAA Tournament,” Ruf said. “But I also think success is about continuing to grow throughout the season and continuing to work as a cohesive team.”

For Lee, reaching the NCAA Tournament would not be the end goal.

“If they can get to the NCAA Tournament, the goal shouldn’t be just getting there,” Lee said. “I think we can win some games.”

The Owls will travel to San Marcos to face Texas State University on Thursday at 7:30 p.m.

15 • WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 2, 2026

THE RICE THRESHER

Men’s tennis reloads after falling short last season

MUYIWA OGUNSOLA / THRESHER

Freshman Francisco Salmain and junior Joshua Mandelbaum practice ahead of the men’s tennis season. Rice kicks off its schedule Oct. 1 in Torreón, Mexico.

OLIVER STERN

THRESHER STAFF

After missing the NCAA Tournament for the first time in three years, Rice men’s tennis enters the 2026-27 season looking to build on last year’s conference dominance and secure its fifth consecutive winning season.

The Owls finished last season 15-8 overall, highlighted by an 8-0 record in American Conference play. In the American Conference tournament, Rice cruised past Tulane University and the University of South Florida before falling short against No. 75 University of Tulsa, denying the Owls back-to-back conference titles and a third consecutive NCAA Tournament appearance.

Despite the early season finish, senior Petro Kuzmenok believes last year’s team represented another step forward for the program.

“I actually think last year might have been the best Rice team we’ve had since I’ve been here,” Kuzmenok said. “We were one match away, so I think we just need to continue doing what we’re doing. We’re already on an upward trajectory.”

Kuzmenok enters the preseason ranked 35th nationally in singles after becoming the first Owl to earn American Conference Player of the Year honors last season. Kuzmenok picked up American All-Conference honors in both singles and doubles each of the last two years. In the 2025-26 season, Kuzmenok was 20-9 in singles and 25-5 in doubles, rattling off 12 consecutive wins with his nowgraduated doubles partner Santiago Navarro.

Kuzmenok spent part of his summer competing in Europe, using the offseason to address an area of his game he believes could help him take another step forward in his final collegiate season.

“I really focused on my physicality and movement,” Kuzmenok said. “Playing tournaments in Europe for the first time was different from junior tournaments, where I relied a lot on my power and just hitting the ball hard. My movement was probably the weakest component of my game going into the summer, so that was the biggest thing I wanted to improve.”

Head coach Efe Ustundag has watched Kuzmenok’s ascension throughout his Rice career. Kuzmenok went from initially being outside the singles lineup as a freshman to becoming the Owls’ top player and a team captain this season.

“The most striking transformation is obviously Petro,” Ustundag said. “As a freshman, he wasn’t in the lineup until Santiago [Navarro] got hurt. Petro got his chance to get in the lineup, and from that point onward, it’s just been an upward trajectory.”

Beyond Kuzmenok, the Owls will have several holes to fill following the departures of Navarro, Kabeer Kapasi and Yair Sarouk.

Navarro, paired alongside Kuzmenok, was a doubles staple for Rice as he collected American All-Conference doubles honors in both 2024 and 2025. Across his four seasons as an Owl, Navarro went 32-37 in singles

and 54-29 in doubles, ending his career on a 13-match doubles winning streak.

Kapasi, a Houston native, compiled a career record of 67-43 in singles and 66-39 in doubles. In addition to his combined 133 wins, Kapasi was named the 2025 American Conference Tournament Most Outstanding Player as he led Rice over Memphis in a 4-2 conference championship victory.

We were one match away, so I think we just need to continue doing what we’re doing. We’re already on an upward trajectory.

Petro Kuzmenok SENIOR TENNIS PLAYER

A transfer from the University of Alabama, Sarouk rounds out the trio of departures after spending his final two seasons with the Owls, posting a 26-22 doubles record while playing primarily alongside Kapasi.

With three rotation pieces gone, Rice will lean on an experienced group of returners to fill larger roles this season.

Senior Tommy Czaplinski posted a 13-7 overall doubles record alongside sophomore Rafael Botran, earning College Sports Communicators Academic All-District honors along the way.

“I think the most important X-factor for us is going to be Tommy,” Ustundag said. “He had a great freshman year, but last year he was in and out of the lineup, dealt with some injuries and we really only got doubles out of him. Getting him fully back could almost be like bringing in a new recruit.”

Junior Gabriel Porras owns a 21-11 career singles record and a 12-10 doubles record.

After limited playing time as a freshman, he rotated between the No. 5 and No. 6 spots last season and finished 15-9 in singles, bouncing back from an early five-match losing streak to win nine straight.

Junior Joshua Mandelbaum has a 19-7 doubles record across his first two seasons and was named a 2026 International Tennis Association Scholar-Athlete.

Botran played a significant role at the No. 3 spot for Rice last season, going 10-10 in singles and 18-8 in doubles.

Ustundag also expects Botran to take another step after becoming a regular in the lineup during his freshman season.

“Rafa last year had a great freshman debut,” Ustundag said. “I think he’s going to be a major, major contributor this year. If Rafa can give us that level near the top along with Petro, then I think we’ve got a great supporting cast.”

Sophomore Noey Do is one of two Houston natives on the roster. In his freshman season, he went 15-8 in singles, going 4-1 combined in conference play and the conference tournament.

The Owls will also turn to a freshman class of Andrew Li, Arin Pallegar and Francisco

Salmain to help replace the production lost from last year’s roster.

Li won two International Tennis Federation singles titles in 2024 and 2025.

He also made it to the semifinals of the 2024 Easter Bowl and finished in the round of 16 at the 2024 United States Tennis Association Boys’ 18 National Championships at Kalamazoo.

Li said the coaching staff and team culture influenced his decision to come to Rice.

“The coaching staff with Efe [Ustundag] and Bojan [Szumanski] and the overall team culture really stood out to me,” Li said. “The older guys were super welcoming, and the elite academics made Rice very enticing.”

As he makes the transition from junior to collegiate tennis, Li is excited to take his style of play to the next level.

“I’d describe my game as super gritty, tough and loud,” Li said. “I’m pretty versatile, and I feel like I can adapt to different styles of play.”

Joining Li at Rice is Arin Pallegar, who ranked inside the nation’s top 50 in the class of 2026. Pallegar initially committed to Stanford University before reopening his recruitment and choosing Rice following

an official visit in February. He reached the singles final at the USTA Winter National Championships and was also a singles finalist in the 2024 USTA Boys’ 16 National Championships at Kalamazoo.

Rounding out the newcomers is Francisco Salmain. Salmain was ranked as high as No. 17 nationally in USTA Boys’ 18s and No. 1 in Texas, highlighted by an undefeated singles run at the 2025 Level 1 Spring Championship.

As these freshmen make the jump to college tennis, Ustundag said his early focus is on helping them adjust rather than expecting immediate results.

“There’s a good level there, but they all need to gain a lot of development and strength and just experience playing at the next level,” Ustundag said. “I’m really, really happy with their effort on court in the first week of practice. The level is probably not even where they would like it to be, but that’s not really our main focus at the moment. It’s about how they make the adjustment.”

The Owls will get their first look at the revamped roster in competition at the U.S. College Cup Invitational Oct. 1-4 in Torreón, Mexico.

Sports Mini 1

PATRICK SHUKIS

SPORTS EDITOR

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1 Lebron or Kyrie, formerly 4 “Game of Thrones” character with a one-word vocabulary 6 Excuse for skipping a workout, maybe 7 Maryland college squad, informally 8 Driving aid?

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Bygone Houston WNBA franchise Be really fond of Rice volleyball head coach Genny Result of a successful at-bat GPS suggestions: Abbr.

16 • WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 2, 2026

BACKPAGE

The Cases of Rice’s Resident Sleuth The Peculiar Policeman’s Perversion Thursday, 11:03 P.M. Pub. I was raised believing that the law would separate lightness from darkness, protect the meek from the mean streets of River Oaks. That was, until I witnessed that the law, too, was corrupt all the way down. A dark and sweaty Thursday, dressed in my beige trenchcoat – pinstriped fedora, pale mask obscuring all facial features – I lined up for Pub. An out-of-shape, pudgy RUPD officer denied me entry because of my outfit.

“Too many buttons,” he tells me while I twirl my watch chain. I scoff: pathetic. But on the way out, I saw that very same officer dapping up ‘the boys,’ raving about the finest shyts on campus. Curious, I stealthily peeked through the RMC’s sliding glass doors with my magnifying glass: there he was, talking about how ‘chill’ he was to two freshmen girls, and seeming a bit too happy. I knew it was time for justice to strike.

Enlisting the help of the Rice Woman’s Boxing Club (RWBC), we set up a trap for this odious officer and his sagging skin. In a delicious voice, the Rice Woman’s Boxing Club convinced RUPD that she was locked out of her room. She made sure to sound extra innocent to entice the policeman pervert. We ran around the corner of the hallway, hot pink boxing gloves in hand. The moment we saw movement, we jumped his ass. After sufficiently pummeling the man we confirmed it was in fact the same officer, like a moth to a flame. Phew.

After I sold all of his possessions on Fizz Marketplace, I realized that this was my true calling: serving justice, for the good of the community.

From that moment onwards – and certainly with the help of my trusty sidekick, the Rice Woman’s Boxing Club – I decided to take on Rice’s most rotten grains.

Perch ’s Pecul i Perpe ar trator

Pub

Friday, 1:08 A.M. Perch.

The time and place where every freshman and wanna-be frat bro on this campus is drunk out of their mind and sweating from body to body. Some are desperate for any kind of intimacy, while others are hoping that Clavicular will show up and touch the ceiling for them. One thing that I’ve learnt over my many days on campus is that people under the influence act on their barest instincts. Some become more social, others more virile. And an infestation of sweaty, intoxicated students creates the perfect storm for crime to brew. I lurked in the corner of Perch, leering at every potential criminal scumbag. Whilst patrolling, I quickly sniffed out the fumes of evil.

“Who THE FUCK just took the lights??” someone bellowed from the doorway.

Heavily intoxicated, I raced down the stairs. Ahead of me, a 6’5” muscle monster raced after a scrawny scared-shitless child. After a long, arduous ten-second chase, the massive man, huffing and puffing, slowed.

I cried out for the man to wait. Under the halogen glow of the streetlights, I got a clear look at the hulk’s face colored by rage: it was the Protector of Perch. “?!” he said. I maintained my nonchalance and remained silent. Breathing only somewhat heavily in my pale mask, I was in awe-filled terror of his sheer strength. For him, I had to crack this case.

The Honor Council’s Peculiar Polls Monday, 8:03 A.M. McNair.

It was a dark and stormy Monday morning: my client was three minutes late and egregiously overdressed, even by my standards.

The freshly-installed LEDs beating down upon us and the kid’s screechings were doing nothing to help my migraine.

“The honor council’s been up everyone’s assholes lately with the new proctored classes they’re implementing! How the fuck am I supposed to pass ECON 100 now?” he asked me. “The council has been simultaneously reporting that they’ve received ten peer reports and have seen an increase in cheating. How the fuck is can there be an increase in cheating if there are barely any peer reports and nobody is supposed to be proctoring the tests? The only explanation: the self-reporting system. I want you to figure out who the fuck would be dumb enough to do that bullshit.”

“I’m sorry I was drunk Love Chao :)”

He asked me if I worked pro bono. “No,” I said. I made him Venmo me $1,000 in advance and told him the other $4,000 would be expected upon completion.

The investigation was slow going. I received complete and detailed self-reports by emailing the Honor Council. I had all of the information I could possibly require, but I spent every waking moment on the prowl, wondering if I was on the right path. If only there was something I could use that would give me the complete and detailed names of every person who has self reported… But alas, I was at a standstill.

It was Tuesday now, a full day without progress.

The next day, I hunted down every lead I could. I tried to track the thief’s footprints, but was thwarted by my peer’s basic taste in shoes.

I considered interviewing potential witnesses, but I was too scared to talk to anyone. Eventually, the sheer quantity of brainpower I was using caused me to collapse in Seibel Servery.

After breaking out of the Student Health Center – many layers of trenchcoats forcefully removed – I was led by the squirrels to a suspiciously shaped acorn. And right next to the acorn were the lights! I had done it. The lights themselves led me to the thief via a small note saying:

I, of course, enlisted the help of the Rice Woman’s Boxing Club (RWBC) to decimate the nearest chitizen.

And then I heard him. Floundering through the RMC, pitchy voice echoing. The cries carried tales of his confession. I stopped him in the hallway and asked him his name. Lo and behold, it was the same name I saw on a self-report I had obtained. After complaining to the professor about his grade on a recent test, he accidentally reported his own mistakes by ranting about how his answers couldn’t have been wrong since ChatGPT was never wrong.

I reconvened with the client upon my success. We decided to condemn the self-reporter to the same fate as a glass bottle near an intoxicated freshman on perch. The client refused to pay his remaining $4,000 fee, so I sicced the Rice Woman’s Boxing Club (RWBC) on him as well.

The Backpage is the satire section of the Thresher, written this week by Will Howley, Rykelle Sandidge, Max Scholl, Caleb Song and Kyle Chen, and designed by Richard Li. For comments or questions, please email realricethresherofficial@rice.edu.