First round of voluntary seperation program participants announced
JAMES CANCELARICH NEWS EDITOR
Rice announced 37 faculty and sta members have retired under the voluntary separation incentive program, according to a university newsletter.
Eligible sta members for the program must be at least 50 years old with three cumulative years at Rice. Lump sum incentives are provided based on years of service as well as medical insurance subsidies to certain eligible participants.
In a June 30 campuswide email sent by university president Reggie DesRoches with provost Amy Dittmar and executive vice president Kelly Fox, the university acknowledged some of the challenges with federal funding. This included a 26% decrease in federal funding for the scal year, at the time of the email, as well as cuts to agencies such as the National Science Foundation.
According to the letter, Rice plans to be more “prudent and agile” in investing and resource management.
“As we consider the future, we will use this period to adjust the way we work to ensure our processes are more e cient and we reduce the time it takes to accomplish our regular work,” the letter reads.
“Additionally, the VSIP will leave certain units with vacancies. While units will have authority to make hiring decisions, each unit should carefully determine whether and how to back ll vacancies so that it can make the wisest use of technology, budget and opportunities to collaborate with other units with whom it can share services.”
The VSIP program follows Rice’s 10year Momentous strategic plan, which intends to grow both the student and faculty body.
Some of the faculty and sta members who chose the VSIP program include the editor-in-chief of open source textbook publisher OpenStax, the senior editor of Rice Magazine, the director of development
at the school of continuing studies, as well as a number of carpenters, custodial sta , bus drivers and technicians.
“As part of the university’s growth under Momentous, VSIP reinforces our
values by honoring long-serving sta while enabling thoughtful transitions, knowledge transfer, and strategic planning,” a communication announcing VSIP read.
Rice speech and debate sweeps national award, talk about teamwork
This semester, Rice’s speech and debate team has received 58 awards across ve national competitions.
The number one non-negotiable, according to head coach David Worth, who spent 24 years at the program at Rice, is teamwork.
“There’s a school of thought where winning is the only thing,” Worth said. “Our primary goal is always a healthy, supportive culture. People can learn in terms of skills but also intellectual problems that they can interact with.”
In one unique competition, sweepstakes points are awarded across multiple years. Rice won the Perpetual Sweepstakes Champion award for the rst time since 2013.
“When you win, they reset your points to zero, and that’s why it took a little over a decade for us to get it back,” Worth said. “I love that award because it speaks to the e ort of the team across generations. There are alumni out there now who were a part of winning that award, who are out there in the working world, and they earned points right alongside the rst-year students a couple of weeks ago who were with us at the tournament.”
The team welcomed over 100 visitors to campus with the annual Rice University Classic, winning rst place for the sweepstakes and one team winning rst place for a parliamentary debate.
For Nikki Stancik and Kyle Sanderfer, who won 1st place in the Parliamentary Debate twice, Rice Debate is all about collaboration.
“This is the rst season where Kyle and I are working together throughout the whole season,” said Stancik, a Duncan
College senior. “It felt really good to know that the partnership was going to be stable and to know that we were going to work well together.”
Everybody’s just working really hard to support everybody else.
Kyle Sanderfer DUNCAN COLLEGE
SENIOR
According to Sanderfer, the team’s strong and supportive culture builds up the steady performance.
“When it’s the elimination rounds and some people are still in the tournament, some people might have been eliminated, we’ve done a really good job of still being able to come together as a team and working together, helping to prepare for the rounds ahead,” said Sanderfer, also a Duncan College senior. “Everybody’s just working really hard to support everybody else.”
As Sanderfer plans to graduate in May, he said he’s seen the team change over the years, but Worth’s core values have remained.
“Having this being my fourth year, having been on [the team] through all of my time at Rice, it’s very interesting how every year some people graduate, some
people stay,” said Sanderfer. “The team culture is a very integral part, and just seeing the culture kind of evolve over time but also keep its core of being very team-focused, being very positive and supportive.”
Debate also o ers an opportunity to bridge disciplines between students, Stancik said. There are students from a variety of schools of study and backgrounds on the team.
“It’s really interesting the wide range of people who are just interested in participating,” Stancik said, “Debate gives me new experience with topics that I would have never interacted with before, both through the topics and through the way people are running them.”
JIAQU XU FOR THE THRESHER
LAKSHMI ARAVINDAN / THRESHER
COURTESY DAVID WORTH
Rice Speech and Debate posing after a competition at the University of the Paci c in Stockton, CA. The team won 58 awards across ve competititons this semester.
Hundreds gather at Rice Stadium for lung cancer awareness walk
SANJANA RAMINENI THRESHER STAFF
Nearly 300 students, clinicians and community members gathered at Rice Stadium on Nov. 16 for the annual Lung Cancer Awareness Walk, organized by the Rice University American Lung Cancer Screening Initiative.
Partnering with the national lung cancer nonprofit LUNGevity and other organizations across the Texas Medical Center, the walk aimed to bring together Houstonians to raise awareness and confront stigmas surrounding lung cancer.
Lung cancer is the leading cause of cancer death in the U.S. It accounts
for about 1 in 5 of all cancer deaths, with about 124,730 deaths in 2025. Catching cancer early often increases the likelihood of successful treatment.
“By the time someone is coughing up blood, it’s already too late,” said Pankti Mehta, co-president of Rice ALCSI and Sid Richardson College senior.
“Screening is a five-minute low-dose CT scan with even less radiation than an airport scanner. But there’s a lot of stigma associated with lung cancer … It’s the smoker’s disease.”
But lung cancer affects more than just smokers.
“People assume lung cancer is your fault because you smoked. But about 45% of patients diagnosed have never
smoked,” said Joan Burnham, an oncology nurse navigator at Houston Methodist Hospital who helped mentor the student organizers.
I think this event makes it seem like a big community
trying to help each other out.
Rishabh Mandyan MCMURTRY
COLLEGE JUNIOR
Burnham said that only about 6% of eligible people get screened for lung
cancer each year.
“That leaves a huge number who don’t get screened,” Burnham said. “The longer we wait to find cancer, the more likely it is to be in advanced stages.” By bringing people together, organizers said they hoped that the community could resist the stigma around lung cancer.
“Having people who have maybe survived through lung cancer, or have family members who have lung cancer, all coming together to spread awareness is a great thing,” said Rishabh Mandyan, a board member of ALCSI and McMurtry College junior. “I think this event makes it seem like a big community trying to help each other out.”
Senate ditches proposed restrictions on political speech
Senate has put discussions over the restrictions of political speech to rest. The original resolution, Senate Resolution 3, was unanimously voted down, and a resolution created in response to the original was tabled indefinitely.
Stretching into its fifth week of discussion, much of the debate in the Senate meeting on Monday centered around exceptions to what was considered political speech. Senators also discussed the role of the president as “spokesperson” and the possibility that the Senate would then have to approve every communication from the president.
“If you want an institutional neutrality policy, it should be true neutrality, which means that you are not making statements on anything,” said Duncan College President Taylor Schultz. “That is the entire point of neutrality.”
The resolutions, which followed a statement Student Association President Trevor Tobey released on the SA Instagram account about conservative influencer Charlie Kirk’s death, suggested that the SA taking stances on some issues while remaining silent on others created a perception of bias.
Both resolutions said a policy of institutional neutrality would reaffirm the SA’s commitment to freedom of speech and diversity of thought.
Resolution 3 prohibited the president and the Senate from explicitly stating a political or ideological stance. If the issue affected the ability of students to engage in free expression or the functioning of the SA, and if it pertained to the fundamental education mission of the university, then a statement would be allowed.
Under the constitution, the president is the “spokesperson” for the SA. In Resolution 3, if a statement is believed to have violated the resolution, then it could be sent to University Court for review.
“The president can determine what they can say, but if what they’re saying violates some sort of rule, you can hold them accountable,” SA Parliamentarian Zachary Weinbrum said.
If you want an institutional neutrality policy, it should be true neutrality, which means that you are not making statements on anything.
Taylor Schultz
DUNCAN COLLEGE PRESIDENT
However, Weinbrum said it would be unconstitutional to transfer the spokesperson role to the Senate. Weinbrum made a number of clarificatory changes to the resolution following the previous week’s discussion.
Regardless, the Senate chose not to adopt the changes and voted down the resolution.
The second resolution, titled “The Senators’ Resolution on Political Neutrality No. 7 To Amend the Institutional Neutrality of Official Communications,” included that in order for a potentially political statement to be issued, the Senate would first have to pass a resolution, which requires a twothirds vote.
Resolution 7 had an additional exception to institutional neutrality for a “tragic, unexpected, or emergency event that substantially affects the safety, wellbeing, or immediate needs of the undergraduate student body.”
Some members of the Senate expressed concerns over how the Senate could respond to statements made by the president.
Under Resolution 7, the president
cannot issue a statement on a political issue without senate approval. However, the lack of clarity over what constitutes a political statement could lead to unclear routes for communications to be issued.
All that we talked about for the last five weeks was how we could get out of it. If we don’t want institutional neutrality, then let’s just not do institutional neutrality.
Trevor Tobey
STUDENT ASSOCIATION PRESIDENT
resolution would require the Senate to review every communication the president issues.
“I think another just fundamental issue is if the Senate needs to review every single message that the President sends,” Surya said. “That’s probably not the most optimal because there’s no distinction for what would be considered political before that anyway.”
Weinbrum issued a parliamentary inquiry into the resolution, arguing that Senate approval for certain presidential communications was unconstitutional.
Tobey said much of the conversation was about workarounds for institutional neutrality and limits on presidential speech.
“All that was talked about for the last five weeks was how we could get out of it,” Tobey said. “If we don’t want institutional neutrality, then let’s just not do institutional neutrality.”
Sid Richardson College President Arjun Surya said he worried that the
JAMES CANCELARICH NEWS EDITOR
JAMES CANCELARICH / THRESHER
Brown College new student representative Neya Gupta, Brown president Holden Koch and Brown senator Max Menchaca debate institutional neutrality during senate. Both resolutions concerning political speech were voted down or tabled inde netly.
In post-Roe Texas, abortion exhibit brings storytelling to Fondren
RUBY GAO THRESHER STAFF
In the main corridor and rst-$oor display cases in Fondren Library, the exhibit “Focus on Abortion: Americans Share Their Stories” displays 15 faces: some smiling, some solemn — but all a ected by abortion.
To Lora Wildenthal, the director of the center for the study of women, gender, and sexuality, the exhibit brings attention to the abortion experiences that are o%en le% unspoken.
“This whole project is about silence, and there’s a tremendous amount of silence about many things connected to reproduction, de nitely about abortion,” Wildenthal said. “Some of those people’s stories are powerful in the time a%er abortions were denied a%er Dobbs and a%er the Texas legislation.”
Storytelling is a lot more moving and aslo a lot more indisputable than dry statistics. Abortion storytelling shows that people who choose to get an abortion are making these decisions with agency.
Georgia Jensen CO - FOUNDER OF RICE STUDENTS FOR REPRODUCTIVE JUSTICE
On Sept. 1, 2021, the Texas Heartbeat Act took e ect, banning most abortions a%er the detection of a fetal heartbeat and authorizing private citizens to sue anyone who “aids or abets” the procedure. In Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the Constitution does not confer a right to abortion, thereby overturning Roe v. Wade and returning the issue of abortion regulation to the states.
The 15 stories in the exhibit are drawn from writer and photographer Roslyn Banish’s book, “Focus on Abortion: Americans Share Their Stories.”
The same abortion exhibit was also held at Fondren Library from the fall 2021 to early 2022. However, Wildenthal said it did not receive the attention it deserved during this time due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Georgia Jensen, co-founder of Rice Students for Reproductive Justice, said the exhibit serves as a reminder that abortion access is essential to young adults.
“Abortion is wildly important to young people,” said Jensen, a Brown College senior. “Most abortions are sought by women in their 20s, which is right after college.”
Wildenthal said abortion in the U.S. is closely tied to public policy and that access can vary greatly depending on where a
Seeing these stories and the images of people who have had abortions together inspires people who might otherwise be wary of talking about abortion in Texas.
Carly Thomsen ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR OF ENGLISH
person lives.
“The practice of abortion has been turned into a part of a political program that has manifested itself in the state
been removed at 2 a.m. before.
“With a successful pilot this year, we hope that future programs will receive direct university funding,” Lau wrote. “It is not good stewardship for the Student Association to continue paying for services that should fall under university responsibility.”
Christian Jattan, a Will Rice College freshman, often studies in Fondren late at night. Jattan that the pilot program would be beneficial to them.
“Finals are so stressful in that you have a bunch of exams lined up,” Jattan said. “It would be helpful to have even just a short period of time where a 24hour policy is available.”
Leslie Rojo Flores, a Jones College sophomore, said that while she is not planning to use Fondren services past normal hours, many of her friends have
“I think doing a pilot would be a great idea to test out if students are actually interested in it,” Rojo Flores said. “During finals, it’s a specific time where students would most commonly want to be at Fondy past 2 a.m.”
However, Jattan said that the current 7 a.m. to 2 a.m. weekday hours are already inclusive for the student population.
“I think it also helps influence the idea that students don’t have to necessarily grind it out through the entire night,” Jattan said. “It gives students a secondary way of hearing, ‘You also need sleep in order to understand all the information that you’re trying to take in.’”
24/7 Fondren operations in the long term would be a costly project, Garrison said Fondren—encompassing 216,000 square feet, eight staircases and four elevators—requires retrofitting for a secure 24-hour space, Garrison said.
laws in Texas and in the removal of a 50-year-old constitutional right nationally,” Wildenthal said.
For Carly Thomsen, an associate professor of English who teaches classes on reproductive politics, the exhibit fosters productive discussions of abortion in response to political silencing.
“Seeing these stories and the images of people who have had abortions together inspires people who might otherwise be wary of talking about abortion in Texas,” Thomsen said. “A place where the Texas Legislature is trying to prevent any ways of thinking about abortion that are positive,” Thomsen said.
Jensen said art shows — rather than tells — viewers how expanded access to abortion
I think doing a pilot would be a great idea to test out if students are actually interested in it. During finals, it’s a specific time where students would most commonly want to be at Fondy past 2 a.m.
Leslie
Rojo Flores
JONES COLLEGE SOPHOMORE
“The current pilot uses an RUPD campus safety officer staffing model for overnight coverage, ensuring student safety without requiring new physical infrastructure,” Garrison wrote. “No additional building modifications were made for this round, which allows the
can positively shape people’s lives.
“Storytelling is a lot more moving and also a lot more indisputable than dry statistics,” Jensen said. “Abortion storytelling shows that people who choose to get an abortion are making these decisions with agency.”
Wildenthal said displaying the lived experiences behind the issue compels viewers to come face-to-face with a reality they might not want to confront.
“Regardless of what people think about abortion itself, these stories are real,” Wildenthal said. “These experiences are real. And the fact that some people think abortion is wrong and should be illegal, and they are satis ed that it is illegal, doesn’t change these people’s stories.”
program to operate within existing budget limits.”
Jattan said that he hopes there will be 24/7 study space for students, regardless of location.
“I think it would be helpful to have a general space where students could just come in even if it wasn’t Fondy, just an area where students could stay late night,” Jattan said. “It would be beneficial for Fondy to offer 24/7 hours, even if it was 24/7 even some nights.”
Currently, the SA is working on establishing a 24-hour study space in an existing academic building, Lau said.
“The SA is really hoping that the student success initiatives we’ve launched this year (such as $5 printing and 24-hour Fondren access) will get the ball rolling and motivate the university to assume funding for these services going forward by demonstrating clear student demand,” Lau wrote.
FRANCESCA NEMATI / THRESHER
The “Focus on Abortion” exhibit in Fondren Library has 15 photos of people who were a ected by abortion. The exhibit comes during an increased federal and statewide restrictions on abortion access.
EDITORIAL
Show up or shut up for 24-hour Fondren
With Thanksgiving fast approaching, perhaps it’s time to show some gratitude for what the Student Association actually has done. Although the funding is slightly dubious, $5 printing credits have hit our accounts.
However, the main reason to be thankful is that Fondren Library will be open 24 hours a day finals week. In short, the election promises of countless SA candidates past are finally coming to fruition.
The fight for 24-hour Fondren is still far from over, though. Fondren and the SA are sharing the cost of this initiative, but if there isn’t sufficient student use
during finals, they may not expand funding beyond that.
If this is something you care about, we better see you cramming in Fondren in the middle of the night.
This is a message, then, for all those students who spent so long complaining about Rice’s lack of a 24/7 library: go use it. Cover that whiteboard in mechanisms
for your orgo exam. Print the entirety of “The Divine Comedy” to write your English paper. Do a 24-hour library challenge. Chat with the RUPD officer being forced to stand in Fondren all night. Take a nap. Whatever you need to do to show this initiative was worth the money; do it.
Our student body has a real issue with apathy. We don’t vote in SA elections. We don’t go to football games. We don’t go to publics and then grumble when party culture suffers.
Don’t let 24-hour Fondren become another victim of this epidemic. If this is something you care about, we better see
you cramming in Fondren in the middle of the night. Also, take this as an opportunity to notice what the SA can do if they set their minds to it. Instead of debating for weeks on end about so-called “institutional neutrality” or about food pantries in residential colleges (an issue that has proved surprisingly contentious despite the clear positives that would come from it), 24-hour Fondren shows a success from the SA that we hope to see repeated.
Editor’s note: News editor James Cancelarich recused himself from this editorial due to reporting on the corresponding story in our news section.
Ask a Rice philosopher: What do people deserve?
Today’s questioner asks, “What do people deserve?” Surely that deserves an answer.
Let’s start with moral praise and condemnation. It seems pretty obvious that you only deserve praise for doing what’s right, and you only deserve condemnation for doing what’s wrong.
What’s interesting is the nuance we add to what’s obvious.
We think people deserve praise for doing the right thing for the right reasons, not just because it would make them look good. And people don’t deserve condemnation for making bad things happen when it was purely an accident.
Another nuance involves expectations. Sometimes, a dad is praised for doing the same childcare work that most moms do by default. Sometimes, a woman is praised for not having masterminded a crime and only gone along with it reluctantly. Why?
People tend to think that reactions like praise and condemnation are more deserved when there is a noteworthy deviation from what they take for granted. It’s not false to say, “Tim did the right thing by not running someone over,” but it would be odd to say it at all, and even odder to say it with enthusiasm and admiration.
It seems to hold that people deserve good (or bad) things for being morally good (or bad) when their moral goodness (or badness) is notably on display.
To deserve something good for doing something smart, your smarts have to be on display, whether that’s deserving an A for acing an exam or deserving a Nobel prize for breakthroughs in carbon chemistry.
People tend to think that reactions like praise and condemnation are more deserved when there is a noteworthy deviation from what they take for granted.
To deserve something good for your excellent artistry, it has to be on display in a lyrical poem that deserves to be added to an anthology or a bold painting that deserves to be displayed in a gallery.
Even if all this has been right, it’s important to see there’s a big gap between what is deserved and what people should actually do. A robber doesn’t deserve your wallet, but you should probably hand it over anyway.
Likewise, Hitler wanted to be a painter before he took up politics, and maybe some of his paintings deserve a nice word or two for their composition or color, but most of us wouldn’t think that’s enough justification to actually say anything positive about Hitler.
With that said, it’s still true that, if you’re going to do anything to people, starting with what they deserve is generally a good idea.
If you’re going to punish someone for acting immorally or writing lousy poetry, the limit to how nasty you should be is probably set by how much punishment they deserve — that is, by how much badness was on display and how notable it was.
Should you aim at giving people exactly what they deserve? That sounds nice when we think about giving kind, brilliant people what they deserve.
But what about people who have put their bad qualities on display? Should they get exactly what they deserve? Philosophers disagree.
Into this disagreement steps William Shakespeare. Hamlet says, “Use every man after his desert and who shall ʼ scape whipping?” He instead urges that people be treated better than they deserve: “The less they deserve, the more merit is in your bounty.”
Required Reading: Arpaly, N. 2002. “Moral Worth.” Journal of Philosophy 99, 223-45.
Extra Credit: Sher, G. 1987. Desert. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Perhaps we cannot always treat people better than they deserve: Some robbers need to go to jail, and there can be only one Nobel Prize for physics each year. But when we can, maybe we should.
Dr. Tim Schroeder is a professor in the department of philosophy. If you have a question about reality, knowledge, ethics, consciousness, truth, beauty or other abstract theoretical realms (or about how they apply to what your roommate just did), why not ask him about it? Email your questions to askaricephilosopher@rice.edu.
How many times have you partied at Perch this semester?
Total number of responses: 236
Next week’s question: What time are you normally in Fondren Library?
TIM SCHROEDER PROFESSOR OF PHILOSOPHY
JOANNA LI / THRESHER
Global chats: International students need better health care guidance
VALERIA REVATTA FOR THE THRESHER
Chest tight, hands sweaty and breath heavy, I sat in my dorm waiting for someone to answer the phone. After a nurse frigidly asked what I needed — and after 10 frustrating attempts of pronouncing “or-thuh-PEE-dist” correctly — I finally got an appointment at the Houston Methodist Hospital for my lower back pain.
While I knew it was important for me to get treated, I’ll admit I did not want to because I felt anxious. Even with the brief online health insurance course that the Office of International Students and Scholars provides to international students, I still felt I could not go through the process by myself. So, I decided to ask a friend to come with me — one of the best decisions I’ve ever made.
Now, while I’ll not be discussing how “bad” the U.S. health insurance system is, I will note some differences.
First off, the exasperating amount of paperwork I had to go through before my appointment.
I not only had to confirm that I was in fact going to go, but I also had to fill out different forms, one of which weirdly asked about my race. At home, I would’ve just made the call and waited — no need for confirmations, pre-payments or long digital check-ins.
On the day of the appointment, my friend and I first had to find the correct
location in the complex network of towers at the Texas Medical Center. Like rats in a maze, we went up and down the elevators, rushed up the stairs and walked by a million corridors until we finally found the correct office. At the front desk, I had yet more forms to fill
While Rice can’t solve these problems with the U.S. health care system, they may be able to reduce international students’ stress and anxiety about going to the doctor.
while we waited in the cold sitting area of the 25th floor.
Though the whole process was slow and inefficient, the appointment itself was quick.
When my name was called, a nurse led us into another room and I got my X-rays done. After waiting for another 10 minutes, the doctor came in and asked a series of scripted questions about my pain.
He then examined the X-rays, my legs and my spine to finally give me a list of medical facilities where I could get physical therapy.
However, before the doctor left the
room, he asked me which pharmacy I used. And my brain just froze — I did not know how to respond. Back at home, I’ve always been given the medicines I needed on the spot, or I could get them at any pharmacy without an “insurance network” that limited my access to them.
Looking back, apart from the highly systematized and inefficient process I had to go through, the unwelcoming and unfriendly treatment from the medical staff is what made the whole experience more stressful.
While Rice can’t solve these problems with the U.S. health care system, they may be able to reduce international students’ stress and anxiety about going to the doctor.
Thus, I propose that the OISS ensure that students are knowledgeable on how their Aetna Health insurance works by providing a mini booklet with explanations and information (such as medical facilities, phone numbers, doctors and directions) in Rice’s welcome kit.
I also propose the OISS give quick seminars to teach students what to expect when scheduling an appointment and how to manage their insurance properly.
Finally, for international students, if you ever feel afraid or intimidated by U.S. healthcare, please ask for help from one of your friends or someone at your residential college. Because, believe me, you will need it.
Valeria Revatta is a Duncan College freshman majoring in architecture. After living all her life in Mexico City, she brings a unique voice and perspective on international students’ experiences.
Meal swipe system is killing college culture for o -campus students
ABIGAIL CHIU
MARTEL COLLEGE SOPHOMORE
This year’s much-criticized meal swipe system, with its limited number of guest swipes and ID checks, has had an unintended consequence: severing the bond between off-campus students and their residential college and negatively impacting the social fabric that makes Rice unique.
Off-campus students, particularly those who advised during O-Week, could previously count on their on-campus friends or O-Week kids to lend them a swipe from the generous allotment of the previous plan. Now, though, they find themselves scrounging for one of the limited guest swipes—if they bother to stop by their college commons at all.
Now, instead of O-Week lunches or dinners where advisors can hear life updates from their new students over a free meal swipe, some advisors are skipping their weekly O-Week catchups altogether because it’s not worth the trek to a college that can’t even feed them. O-Week family meals are yet another casualty of this new system.
For many off-campus students, their residential college is an inconvenient, out-of-the-way destination they have to make a concerted effort to visit. Now, with no promise of a free meal, there’s much less compelling them to make that
CORRECTIONS
effort.
With Rice’s increasing enrollment squeezing housing capacity and all colleges transitioning to kicking off juniors, residential colleges will soon be bereft of the junior class’s participation in college culture. For a system intentionally designed to have a balanced and diverse profile, this seems like a major shortcoming.
A distant junior class might become an absent senior class, especially if those juniors feel less of that sentimental tug toward on-campus living in their final year and decide to stay off campus.
Furthermore, this weakened bond might persist as these neglected offcampus juniors rise to the senior class, the upperclassmen leaders of their college and enjoy their final hurrah in hallmark Rice traditions like their college’s public or Beer Bike. A distant junior class might become an absent senior class, especially if those juniors feel less of that sentimental tug towards
on-campus living in their final year and decide to stay off-campus.
Rice touts the residential college system as one of its unique, distinguishing features, but colleges need to engage across a spectrum of their students in order to thrive, including off-campus students. The meal swipe program is only driving them further away and pushing them out of their college, and that could kill residential college culture for everyone.
Editor’s Note: This is a guest opinion that has been submitted by a member of the Rice community. The views expressed in this opinion are those of the author and do not necessarily represent or reflect the views of the Thresher or its editorial board. All guest opinions are fact-checked to the best of our ability and edited for clarity and conciseness by Thresher editors.
In “Cycling and triathlon club members race to world nish lines” Annika Porteous is a junior.
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In “Will Rice closes events to other residential colleges due to misbehavior at Perch parties” the Halloween weekend party at Perch saw at least ve REMS calls and two transports.
The Thresher hath murdered feast! Or, in defense of servery pizza
and best avoided was overblown at best, downright treasonous at worst and certainly one worth rebutting.
I am an avid pizza eater. I always have been, long before I was a Rice Owl. From the lowly square abominations of the middle school cafeteria to some of the best wood-fired, hand-crafted delicacies I have had the pleasure of tasting, I daresay I have some experience with this great culinary invention.
Indeed, for about the first half of this semester, there was not a single day I did not have at least one slice of pizza on my plate.
So, when I saw a scathing critique of servery pizza plastered on the opinion page, I found myself rather incensed. The claim that Rice’s pizza was mediocre
Firstly, the look. The previous column makes a special critique of this, as if the slices were contestants at a beauty pageant, with the author skipping over the pepperoni and cheese pizza at South Servery because they “looked quite sad.”
I must confess this approach quite vexed me. Pizza is not a fancy food to be dressed up in gold leaf and served by butlers bowing. It is a humble food whose appearance should be discounted in favor of actual taste.
I have had high school cafeteria cheese pizzas that looked like hell and tasted like heaven, so to write off a slice of pizza based purely on looks is
GUEST OPINION
a move that compromises the article’s credibility for me. As with most things, but especially with pizza, it’s what’s inside that counts.
Servery pizza was never designed to be great. But it is consistently good, and when you’re faced with the possibility that there might be nothing good for dinner tonight, isn’t the consistently good the greatest thing of all?
Secondly, and perhaps most importantly, the taste. The author dares to call the cheese “barely melted” and the toppings “half-raw.” This could not be further from the truth.
In my experience, the cheese has always been suitably melted and mixed excellently in terms of taste with the tomato sauce. The toppings are never half-raw, and the bread and crust are suitably sturdy in holding up the rest of the slice. Yes, there are some bad days, but they are in the minority and cannot be considered the norm.
The suggestion, to add more ingredients to “elevate the flavor” may sound great on paper, but all that would do is destroy servery pizza’s greatest strength that it is the blissful constant in an ever-shifting menu.
With all but the rarest exceptions,
I have found the taste to be perfectly satisfactory and a fallback for whenever the other items on the menu disappoint.
To experiment would be to turn the servery pizza into just another menu item, fluctuating in tastiness day by day. Servery pizza was never designed to be great. But it is consistently good, and when you’re faced with the possibility that there might be nothing good for dinner tonight, isn’t the consistently good the greatest thing of all?
Editor’s Note: This is a letter to the editor that has been submitted by a member of the Rice community. The views expressed in this opinion are those of the author and do not necessarily represent or reflect the views of the Thresher or its editorial board. Letters to the editor are fact-checked to the best of our ability and edited for grammar and spelling by Thresher editors.
Why we’re ghting to bring Sudan to the Senate
DORIAN ECHASSERIAU & ZAID
RASHID
HANSZEN COLLEGE SENATOR & LOVETT COLLEGE FRESHMAN
When we recently brought forward a resolution in the Student Association condemning the genocide in Sudan, it was never even allowed to reach the Senate floor. We were told that the SA could not take a stance.
We were told that discussing the deaths of thousands of civilians and the displacement of 12 million people somehow fell outside the mission of student government. But refusing to even hear this resolution was not neutrality. It was an active decision to silence students.
We don’t ask the SA to make foreign policy. We ask it to recognize our humanity and to use its platform to amplify student voices, not silence them.
Doctors Without Borders and Human Rights Watch report systematic massacres, ethnically targeted killings, sexual violence and forced starvation perpetrated by the Rapid Support Forces across Sudan.
The United Nations has described the violence as the “world’s largest internal displacement crisis.” This crisis meets all the conditions of a genocide, defined as acts committed “with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group.”
So what happened at Senate? The resolution “Condemning the Genocide
in Sudan and Calling for Institutional and U.S. Action” was written by three Rice students who wanted to stand in solidarity with Sudanese, African and Muslim students on campus and urge the university to release a statement of compassion.
The resolution followed all procedural rules, just like any other piece of legislation. Yet before the Senate could even debate it, SA President Trevor Tobey removed it from the agenda.
After introducing a motion to include it in the agenda, we were given insufficient time to explain and defend a resolution grounded in human rights to a Senate that was potentially uninformed about the scale of what was occurring in Sudan.
At a university that prides itself on open inquiry and ethical leadership, this suppression should alarm every student, regardless of their politics.
For Sudanese students who have lost family members, for African students who see their continent’s crises ignored and for Muslim students already facing Islamophobia and invisibility, neutrality tells them their pain is not within the scope of Senate.
Universities have always been sites of social and moral leadership. From the Free Speech Movement at the University of California, Berkeley to anti-apartheid campaigns across campuses in the 1980s, student governments have played crucial roles in shaping institutional conscience.
To strip student government of that power is to strip away one of the few democratic tools students have. We don’t ask the SA to make foreign policy. We ask it to recognize our humanity and to use its platform to amplify student voices, not silence them.
The refusal to even discuss this resolution reveals a broader attempt to depoliticize student life and to separate
“student issues” from the world students actually live in.
Students don’t exist in isolation. Our families are affected by war, colonialism and displacement. Our communities are shaped by global systems of power, and Rice cannot claim to value diversity and global citizenship while treating these realities as irrelevant.
Moreover, the idea that addressing one crisis sidelines others that are happening across the world is a logical fallacy. We may not be able to take a stance on every genocide happening, but that does not mean that denouncing as many as we can gets us nowhere.
As students, our bargaining power with Rice administration is limited. How else can we demonstrate that this is something students are calling for without engaging with the government that was elected to represent them?
We stand in solidarity with the people of Sudan. We stand with our Sudanese, African and Muslim classmates. We stand with all students who refuse to let their grief or conscience be policed by the language of neutrality. We call on Rice students, faculty and administrators
to reject the weaponization of neutrality and to reaffirm that compassion is not political.
When student government silences its own members, it betrays its mission to represent us. We will continue to organize, both inside and outside Senate chambers, because the fight for human rights is collective and our voices will not be silenced.
When student government silences its own members, it betrays its mission to represent us.
Editor’s Note: This is a guest opinion that has been submitted by a member of the Rice community. The views expressed in this opinion are those of the author and do not necessarily represent or reflect the views of the Thresher or its editorial board. All guest opinions are fact-checked to the best of our ability and edited for clarity and conciseness by Thresher editors.
DARREN SEYEDIN BAKER COLLEGE FRESHMAN
FRANCESCA NEMATI / THRESHER Cheese and pepperoni pizza o ered during lunch at West Servery.
McMurtry senior wins RPC Most Outstanding Student, adds to more than half a century of tradition
YILIAN JIANG FOR THE THRESHER
McMurtry College senior Berny Guerra Arthur was crowned ‘Most Outstanding Student’ at the annual homecoming football game Nov. 9. With his victory, Arthur joins a long line of homecoming court winners — a lineage that includes a cardboard cutout of former Texas governor Ann Richards, two-ply toilet paper and, more recently, Lovett Cat.
Arthur, whose extracurricular activities include serving as president of McMurtry, performing in Rice’s Mariachi Luna Llena and participating in the InterVarsity Christian Fellowship, said he was honored to receive the recognition.
“This is just a sign of continuing to do what I’ve been doing, serving the community, just doing my absolute best to empower others and motivate my peers,” Arthur said.
This year, the Rice Program Council shi ed the focus of the homecoming court by introducing the new title of Most Outstanding Student, replacing the traditional crowning of a homecoming king and queen.
Nimah Shukkoor, a Hanszen College senior and the external vice president of RPC, said the criteria for homecoming court nominations change year to year.
“This year we wanted to do something a little bit di erent, so we came up with the concept of awarding the Most Outstanding Student at Rice,” Shukkoor said. “Outstanding can mean a lot of things, so our idea was someone who was very passionate and contributed a lot of resources, or was very committed and involved in the Rice community.”
Students nominated their peers for homecoming court this year using an online form distributed by RPC. The candidates who received the most nominations within each residential college were named members of the homecoming court and advanced to the next stage, where a voting form was distributed to the broader student body to crown the nal winner.
Arthur was one of seven students on this year’s homecoming court, and a total of 901 votes — representing about 18% of Rice undergraduates — were cast in the nal
“Even a er O-Week, nobody talks to each other,” Wilson said. “They just stick around, they’re in their movies or just going to the commons with the friends that they meet during the week.”
A single O-Week dinner, Wilson said, le a lasting feeling of being excluded.
“I didn’t have a spot at the table, and I felt like they didn’t try to make me feel included in the dinner,” she said. “So when I walked away to an empty table, they still just sat there, and I just felt like that’s not what a family or a community is.”
Wilson’s O-Week dad, Elijah White, is a sophomore at McMurtry and a founding committee member of Chao College. The committee is creating Chao’s foundational documents, traditions and initial programming. He said the new college was intentionally designed to uphold inclusivity.
“We wanted it to be representative of the Rice student body at large, while creating a space that was open for everyone,” he said.
The founding team emphasized simple, everyday connections, White said.
“It’s the little things like knowing your neighbors’ names and talking to them late
voting round.
According to the Woodson Research Center’s centennial timeline, Rice’s homecoming court dates back to 1949, when the rst homecoming queen was crowned. At the time, the competition was run by the Student Association, and the homecoming court was composed of candidates nominated by student organizations. By 1968, prospective candidates were required to gain petition signatures in order to qualify, and the role entailed additional responsibilities, including media interviews and television appearances.
In 1970, Robert “Little Bobby” Duncan ’71 became the rst homecoming king — a victory that caught him by surprise, he said.
“I went to a movie on campus, and when I le , someone said, ‘Hey, you’re nominated for homecoming king,’” Duncan said in a Nov. 15 interview with the Thresher. “And they told me I ran against a Maoist rebel and a snake from the biology department and I won.”
During hal ime at the 1970 homecoming game, Duncan said he walked onto the eld clad in a top hat, cape and hand-painted
nights when you’re walking by,” White said. “It’s really connecting with your hall and just stopping by to see people in commons.”
White said the work of building Chao’s identity required revisiting fundamental decisions.
I love Jones. I still do. I think I’ll always identify with Jones, but I’m also a Chao now.
Prasanna Bendalam JONES COLLEGE FRESHMAN
“As we got the Chao namesake in the summer, suddenly we weren’t College 12, we were Chao College,” he said. “So it just had us di erently approach how we thought about everything … with [the Chaos] being the rst nonwhite namesake, how can we kind of honor them, but also be culturally sensitive to others?”
Sammie Mahung, a Jones College sophomore, said she has mixed feelings about leaving to become a Chao O-Week coordinator.
“There was some internal conflict,”
uorescent tie to receive his recognition in front of a packed stadium.
I was a bit of a legend on campus back then … I was friends with football players, with computer geeks, with everyone. I was famous for speaking my mind, and Rice embraced that.
Robert Duncan ’71 1970 RICE HOMECOMING KING
“The president at the time refused to shake my hand,” Duncan said. “He gave [the homecoming queen] roses, and what he said to me was, ‘Who is this clown?’”
The president of the Alumni Association, however, o ered congratulations.
“He came up and shook my hand, and he said ‘Don’t worry about it, I have a bottle of whiskey to give you,’” Duncan said.
Duncan said he attributed his win to
she said. “I felt like I was abandoning my Jones people.”
Mahung said personality fit also played a role in whether or not a student feels like they belong in their residential college. Mahung said she initially requested Jones because her older brother was already at Jones.
“I wasn’t sorted into Jones, so that is one thing,” Mahung said. “I don’t think it’s my perfect personality match.”
Another Jones student joining Chao’s O-Week coordinator team, freshman Prasanna Bendalam, said he had been interested in the 12th residential college since before arriving at Rice.
“I did remember when I toured, I heard about the plans for our 12th residential college, and that’s something that was always interesting to me,” he said.
Though Bendalam is transferring, he said he still identi es strongly with Jones.
“I love Jones. I still do. If you look at my coord post [on Chao College’s Instagram account], there’s Jones in there too,” Bendalam said. “I think I’ll always identify with Jones, but I’m also a Chao now.”
Bendalam said he hopes to take Jones’ values with him to Chao.
“I think Jones’ competitive spirit will be in Chao, very much so with two coords
his outspoken personality and friendly presence on campus.
“I was a bit of a legend on campus back then … I was friends with football players, with computer geeks, with everyone,” Duncan said. “I was famous for speaking my mind, and Rice embraced that.”
The contest kept its playful tone in the following years. In 1988, Mike Grubbs ’90 was elected the homecoming queen a er running as a joke, but rescinded his title to the runner-up a er the Athletic Department ruled that the winner must be female.
“I would like to have gone as Homecoming Queen … I think it turned out for the best,” Grubbs said in an issue of the Thresher that year.
By the 2000s, the competition had established its legacy as an inclusive and lighthearted tradition. A 2009 issue of the Thresher noted that nominating “ridiculous public gures and landmarks” had become a de ning feature of the contest, re ecting the student body’s deliberate departure from pageant-like competitions. That year, Kanye West was crowned homecoming queen.
Shukkoor said recent homecoming court elections have seen nominations for several non-human contenders as well, ranging from the humanities building construction crane to ESTHER to even a ferret.
“Last year was Lovett Cat; I remember [one year] it was a fridge that won,” Shukkoor said.
Shukkoor said the open-ended nomination process incentivizes student participation and maintains the unconventional spirit of Rice traditions.
“I think keeping it student-led is bene cial, because students have a better gauge of the pulse of the student body,” Shukkoor said.
More than half a century after Duncan’s win, Arthur sees the award as a celebration of showing up and participating in the community.
“What you truly can’t experience anywhere else other than college is the people, the networking, all these clubs, and no student that spends all their free time just studying and doing work would have won an award like this,” Arthur said. “You have to be engaged. You have to show up and meet new people.”
from Jones,” Bendalam said. “But I also think the kindness the people of Jones have shown me will be something that I carry over to Chao.”
Baker College sophomore Bianca Dotson said she wants to transfer to Chao despite being deeply rooted in her current college culture.
“Many of my friends are Bakerites, so I would sacri ce living with them,” Dotson said. “I also fear missing out on all of the fantastic Baker traditions that I have grown accustomed to.”
Dotson said any college community, whether new or old, should feel welcoming by design.
“The ideal college community is a place where everyone feels at home,” she said. “Residential colleges should help new students adapt to university life and form lifelong friendships. Residential colleges can support bonds through socials and accessible community spaces.”
As students decide whether to transfer, White said they shouldn’t overcomplicate the choice.
“I don’t want to say it’s not that deep, because it’s a big decision, but this is four years ... and then you have how many more,” he said. “Do what you feel drawn to, but don’t overthink it.”
FROM FRONT PAGE CHAO COLLEGE
LUCY LI & JOSÉ ELEUTÉRIO / THRESHER
Berny Guerra Arthur (le ) joins two-ply toilet paper and Lovett Cat (background) in Rice Program Council’s homecoming court.
The Music Never Stopped
backwards
Fourth yr. students
Who makes the world taste good, according to Sammy Davis Jr., with “The”
Airport safety org.
Egg cells
Soprano Scotto or Tebaldi
Go to sea
Annoy
Asylum in the Batman universe
Soothing succulent Dra org.
What a slingshot or wishbone has
‘Rice Residency’ hacker house opens application for rst cohort
Lana Yepifanova put aside internship applications to develop a property-management platform last semester that landed her a spot in Harvard St. Commons, a house for budding entrepreneurs. She said she was inspired to start Rice Residency in its image this fall, shortly after arriving in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
“College can be a little lonely when you’re trying to build something on your own,” said Yepifanova, a Will Rice College junior. “When you’re in a community, everything feels more natural. You have support, you have people to brainstorm with and access to funding and opportunities just comes along with living around other people who are doing the same thing.”
Rice Residency is currently accepting applications from undergraduates,
graduate students, visiting students and college dropouts, according to the program’s website. The house will bring students under one roof to build, test and launch ideas while tapping into the Houston startup ecosystem.
Catherine Zhou, a Will Rice junior, spent this past summer at the residency, another hacker house in San Francisco. She said Rice Residency is open to anyone with an idea and an itch to get it off the ground.
“There is not really any specific criteria,” Zhou said. “It is more a general personality trait. We are mainly looking for anyone who is driven, who has some sort of idea, who has a previous history with being ambitious.”
This year, the Princeton Review ranked Jones Business School No. 1 in graduate entrepreneurship education for the seventh consecutive year. Yepifanova said Rice Residency will
bolster opportunities for budding undergraduate entrepreneurs.
“[The Liu Idea Lab for Innovation and Entrepreneurship], Rice Alliance, the Ion District and Greentown Labs all have so many resources in Houston, but I don’t think they’re being funneled to undergrads at Rice,” Yepifanova said.
Rice will join Harvard; the Massachusetts Institute of Technology; the University of California, Berkeley; Babson College and others in offering these increasingly popular hacker houses. Kyle Judah, executive director of Lilie, said Lilie intends to support Rice Residency with both financial resources and faculty.
“We’re here to be helpful in literally every fashion,” said Judah, who has taught Yepifanova and Zhou in business courses. “I’m not going to force it on them … the beauty of this is that it’s organic. It’s original. It’s authentically generated from the community of student innovators.”
Zhou said she and Yepifanova have also reached out to alumni and venture capital groups in hopes of receiving additional support for the house. Until they secure a sure source of funding, Zhou said residents will need to contribute to rent and other living costs. In the future, she said they hope to offer free housing for all residents.
the residency offered speaker events and gatherings for Zhou and other students to learn from experienced founders, including a fireside chat with OpenAI founder Sam Altman and a “demo day” for presenting finished ideas to venture capitalist firms.
“If someone in the house was going to an event, everyone else was automatically invited,” Zhou said.
Yepifanova said Harvard St. Commons offered similar experiences.
“The moment I landed here, just being in the house meant I was instantly plugged into Boston,” she said. “I feel like I’ve met every major
tech group, a lot of the [venture capitalists], all the student clubs. And that wasn’t because I went around networking, it was because everyone already had connections and shared them with each other.”
That environment, Yepifanova said, also changed how she reached out to people outside the house.
“Being together as a group lets you reach out to VCs or firms or institutions and actually ask for support,” she said. “You get that group power.”
Yepifanova said the range of backgrounds that Harvard St. Commons residents had added to the experience of trying to start a venture.
College can be a little lonely when you’re trying to build something on your own. When you’re in a community, everything feels more natural.
Lana Yepifanova WILL RICE COLLEGE JUNIOR
“We have someone here who is very consumer facing and very successful within consumer products, but then we also have the typical tech startup people and people who are doing content creation,” she said. “It is just about having that mindset.”
Even with the logistics still forming, Zhou and Yepifanova say the heart of the project is already clear. They want to create a space where ideas move quickly, people support one another and ambition feels shared rather than solitary.
“If you are very committed to being part of the community and actually putting in that effort, that is all that it takes to really make it magical,” Zhou said.
AISHA KHEMANI & NOAH BERZ SENIOR WRITER & FEATURES EDITOR
SKYLAR WANG / THRESHER
Now accepting applications for the
MELLON MAYS UNDERGRADUATE FELLOWSHIP
Mentoring relationship with Rice faculty
Academic support
Academic stipend of $4,000 per year
Research stipend of $4,500 per summer
Research support & travel of $800 per year
GRE preparation assistance of $1,000*
Grad school app. fee assistance of $300*
Partial student loan repayment**
*Available to Mellon Mays fellows during their senior year at Rice ** Available to fellows who enroll in a PhD program in a Mellon Mays eligible field within three years of graduation from Rice
MMUF aims to support students interested in pursuing a PhD in selected humanistic and social scientific fields of study, beginning at the end of their sophomore year at Rice. INFORMATION SESSIONS:
Monday, December 8, 2025 (5-6 p.m.) at the Multicultural Center
Tuesday, December 9, 2025 (12-1 p.m.) at the Cambridge Office Building
Monday, January 12, 2026
Friendsgivings made with milk, butter and a bit of heart
LINA KANG THRESHER STAFF
As students make their Thanksgiving plans, some may be booking plane tickets back home. But for those staying in Houston, the sharing of meals with loved ones might happen in a residential college kitchen or a friend’s apartment. For students looking for amazing dishes to bring to their Friendsgiving celebrations, the Thresher has rounded up recipes and traditions from around the campus community — perfect for your potluck.
Emma Yuan, a Sid Richardson College freshman, said Friendsgiving means letting go of the measuring cups and trusting her guts.
“Whenever I cook and I change whatever and adjust, and taste, and adjust, and taste, it works out perfectly,” Yuan said.
Food brings out the best in people, she said, but the real magic comes from the people gathered around the table.
“I used to think going around saying what we’re thankful for was kind of silly,” Yuan said. “But now, since we don’t always get the chance to all come together, I really cherish that moment. It reminds me to appreciate what’s right in front of me.”
For Wiess College sophomore Katherine Kyles, her pumpkin pie doubles as a birthday cake since her birthday celebration coincides with her Friendsgiving dinner.
“It’s a much needed break from classes with good vibes, cheap eats and a chance to truly relax and celebrate friendship,” Kyles said. “My favorite Thanksgiving recipe is homemade pecan pie. I live on a small pecan orchard, so my grandma is always nding ways to use the crop.”
Martel College sophomore Courtney
Nelson said she focuses her dishes on making them edible for herself and friends with dietary restrictions.
I used to think going around saying what we’re thankful for was kind of silly. But now, since we don’t always get the chance to all come together, I really cherish that moment. It reminds me to appreciate what’s right in front of me.
Emma Yuan SID RICHARDSON COLLEGE FRESHMAN
“Because of my allergies, I’m familiar with how to bake inclusively and it’s really nice to be able to make others feel included,” Nelson said. “I love the shock on someone’s face when they realize their dietary restrictions have been recognized. I cherish my friends and loved ones and being able to make something from the heart to gi them is one of the purest expressions of my love.”
Sakhi Kedia, a Baker College freshman, said she describes herself as a seasoned baker and enjoys mixing and creating her own recipes.
“One night, my friend and I were bored and wanted to bake something for our own little Friendsgiving,” Kedia said. “She’d never made anything beyond the basics, so I kind of taught her as we went.”
Kedia combined pumpkin mu ns and cream cheese bars and created a new dessert: a cream cheese pumpkin mu n.
“It turned out really good,” Kedia said. “We wrote the recipe down, and we still make it every year, whenever we see each other at Friendsgiving.”
Wiess sophomore Mary Weekley said she likes Friendsgiving because you get to taste all the family specialties.
“Everyone has fun family dishes and I love trying them,” Weekley said. “My dad’s cousin is a professional bachelor, so one year he wrapped bacon around canned green beans and poured a thousand island dressing on top and then baked them. If you’re skeptical, most people are. But it’s so good, I suddenly like green beans on Thanksgiving.”
The center of attention at Lovett College freshman Antonio Nuno’s Thanksgiving isn’t the turkey, but his family’s macaroni and cheese.
“It started the year my mom decided Kra just wasn’t enough anymore,” Nuno said. “She said we were too old for powdered cheese, and that was it.”
That year, his family went to the grocery store to nd “real cheese,” grabbing anything they could nd: mozzarella, cheddar, Colby Jack and smoked gouda.
“Someone was shredding cheese, someone was stirring the sauce, someone was stealing pieces of bacon,” Nuno said. “When we pulled it out of the oven, bubbling and golden, it felt like we’d made something that actually belonged to us.”
The “Mac Attack” has since become a Thanksgiving staple in his household.
“No matter how much time passes, or who’s cooking that year, it always feels the same,” he said. “It tastes like home, like family.”
Friendsgiving chicken salad
Ingredients:
Salad
Sweet potatoes
Pomegranate
Kale
Chicken breast
Honeycrisp apple
Honeycrisp apple
Feta cheese
Dressing:
Garlic
Olive oil
Red wine vinegar
Honey
Fresh herbs
Salt and pepper
Instructions:
1. Dice, season, and roast sweet potatoes
2. Season and grill chicken breast
3. Destem kale and chop
4. Massage kale with olive oil and salt
5. Make dressing by mashing garlic and combining rest of ingredients to taste
6. Cut up apple
7. Top kale with nished roasted potatoes, chicken, pomegranate seeds, dressing, apple, and feta cheese
COURTESY EMMA YUAN
Sid Richardson College freshman Emma Yuan’s chicken salad brings her improvisational cooking style to the Friendsgiving table.
Movies to keep you sane over Thanksgiving break
ARMAN SAXENA & CHARLIE CRUZ
A&E EDITOR & THRESHER STAFF
Between the chaos of airport security, too much turkey and the annual “so what are you doing a er college?” interrogation, Thanksgiving break can feel like anything but a break. Luckily, lm o ers the perfect escape — or re ection, depending on how unhinged your family dynamic gets. Whether you’re back home in the suburbs or hiding out with friends, here are six movies to pair with your le over pumpkin pie.
If you want something to help process your family trauma: “The Ice Storm”
Ang Lee’s melancholic masterpiece turns Thanksgiving dysfunction into art. Set in 1970s Connecticut suburbia, “The Ice Storm” follows two families slowly unraveling under the weight of repression, boredom and polyester. The lm’s frigid tone and su ocating stillness make it the cinematic equivalent of overhearing your parents argue once again about why Dad chose rotisserie chicken instead of turkey. It’s catharsis for anyone whose “family bonding” leans more toward psychological warfare than a Hallmark card.
Alternate: “Krisha”
If you want something new for the whole fam: “Wicked: For Good”
The green girl is back, and she’s defying gravity once more. With showstopping numbers, bright visuals and a story about misunderstood women, “Wicked: For Good” is a perfect choice for family viewing that won’t leave you wishing for selective hearing. Everyone from your younger cousin to your theater-major aunt will nd something to
belt along to.
Alternate: “Zootopia 2,” “Rental Family”
If you want something new for you and your older cousins: “Hamnet”
“Nomadland” director Chloé Zhao is back — this time with a story centering Agnes (o en called Anne), the wife of William Shakespeare. The period piece starring Jessie Buckley and Paul Mescal is already a major frontrunner in this year’s Oscar race, especially a er winning the People’s Choice Award at the Toronto International Film Festival, an award that was given to “Nomadland” and “Green Book” just months before they went on to win Best Picture.
Alternate: “Frankenstein”
If you want something to make you feel all warm and fuzzy: “Paddington 2”
Few lms radiate pure kindness like “Paddington 2.” The marmalade-loving bear returns for a story about decency, friendship and the power of community, all wrapped in Wes Anderson-like visual charm. It’s funny, heartfelt and genuinely moving without ever tipping into cynicism. This is a lm that reminds you that goodness to your fellow human is what the holiday is all about.
Alternate: “A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving”
If you want something your parents would love: “Planes, Trains and Automobiles”
Steve Martin and John Candy de ne “odd couple energy” in this classic road trip comedy about trying and failing to get home for Thanksgiving. Between delayed ights, bad motels and existential meltdowns, the lm captures the bittersweet absurdity of travel season with equal parts slapstick and heart. It’s a guaranteed crowd-pleaser,
especially if your parents are the type to insist “they don’t make ‘em like this anymore.”
Alternate: “Hannah and Her Sisters,” “Addams Family Values”
If you want something cute and autumnal: “Fantastic Mr. Fox”
Wes Anderson’s stop-motion gem is pure fall aesthetic; it’s all corduroy, warm tones and existential woodland creatures. It’s clever, funny and visually cozy enough to make you forget the outside world entirely.
Watching George Clooney’s sly fox outwit farmers while debating philosophy over apple cider feels like curling up in a cashmere blanket woven from cinematic perfection.
Alternate: “Little Women” (2019)
If you want to have a debate over the political climate while entertained: “Don’t Look Up”
Adam McKay’s climate change satire is the perfect lm for families who like their dinner conversations spicy. Leonardo DiCaprio and Jennifer Lawrence play astronomers desperately trying to warn humanity about a planet-killing comet while politicians, tech billionaires and morning show hosts treat the apocalypse like background noise. It’s funny until it’s not, then funny again in a way that makes you question everything. The lm works as both sharp political commentary and a disaster movie; perfect for sparking the kind of heated debate that makes your aunt storm o to the kitchen while simultaneously keeping everyone entertained enough to actually nish watching. Whether you think it’s brilliant satire or heavy-handed preaching probably depends on which side of the dinner table you’re sitting on, and that’s exactly the point.
Alternate: “12 Angry Men”
‘Softshell’ stages grief at Houston Cinema Arts Festival
Everyday conversation is exhausting. All those pauses, mumbles, the e ort to say what you mean. Hollywood blockbusters reorient us away from this dull rhythm to an unnatural pace designed for heightened sensation.
When a lm actually moves at the speed of life, it disorients. In his debut feature, “So shell,” director Jinho Myung embraces the naturalism characteristic of mumblecore — a loose lmmaking ethos associated with true-to-life acting and casual speech — to explore “the underlying Asian-American conversation,” he said, one “not as overt as media … might make it seem.”
Diasporic Asian experience, for Myung, boils down to “the unsaid” and “in-between” — what isn’t vocalized. Both the so shell turtle and the mumble become his analogues for grief as estrangement from language, from one’s capacity to articulate loss.
The lm begins with language’s failure. At a reception for her recently deceased mother at a Thai Buddhist temple in New York City, Jamie (Caledonia Abbey) struggles in
conversation with her aunt (Heen Sasithorn) and brother Narin (Legyaan Thapa), both uent Thai speakers. Jamie is Thai through her mother and white through her father, but more fundamentally, she’s unstable in language itself.
When family friend Johnny (Johnny Zito) inquires whether the siblings have inherited their mother’s salon — which they lost — and o ers Jamie employment at his pet store, the thought of commerce in a moment of supposed sanctity feels intrusive. Johnny is a white English speaker, and a er the aunt leaves, Jamie seems to breathe more easily — but only at the level of language. Very seldom does Jamie seem to breathe otherwise.
The lm opens with an epigraph from W.E.B. DuBois’s “The Souls of Black Folk,” which discusses double consciousness. Later, Jamie discusses the passage with Narin in both English and broken Thai, noting its resonance with her feelings of “twoness.” Narin interrupts to correct her Thai mistakes. The failure of language compounds.
But the twoness Jamie identi es with isn’t about mixed-race identity — “So shell” is far from a DuBoisian reading of “wasian” identity
— but a fundamental detachment from her environment. Jamie seems divested from the world except for her pet lizard and favorite video game, which features a disheveled girl in her bedroom with no clear objective but to keep moving. Throughout the lm, Jamie doesn’t seem to be getting anywhere either.
Myung depicts Asian American identity through uncomfortable proximities. David, Jamie’s partner, is a white chef o en shown butchering live animals. A er spending the night at his place, he tells her she’s quiet and suggests she could be more vocal during sex. Hours later, he shows up unannounced to apologize. For what? Jamie is unsure. When she mentions he works at a Thai restaurant, Narin snickers. What’s funny? We all know what’s funny about their relationship.
The lm allows these moments to land through what’s unsaid. During a romantic encounter with a white woman, David’s friend (played by Myung himself) notices her walls covered in K-pop idol posters. He glances at them mid-kiss, looks elsewhere — almost at the audience. The joke is the subtle act itself.
An oscillation between threat and care structures Myung’s narrative. Earlier, a homeless man on the subway asks for change. He drums on the wooden urn containing their mother. Ashes spill across the train oor. The siblings only stare. Indignity accumulates without catharsis, death layering upon deaths.
The turtle crystallizes grief as a relational process. At her zoo job, Jamie learns so shell turtles have been appearing around New York City without explanation. A er promising to cook Narin the Thai soup their mother used to make, she stops at an Asian market and fails to communicate about where to nd chicken, but nds a so shell turtle without asking. Language fails, but recognition doesn’t. She brings it home.
David, invited over for dinner, snoops around the kitchen. As an intended act of kindness, he procures a knife and begins
chopping spring onions. He nds the turtle in a metal bowl, smirks and assumes it’s for consumption.
The camera holds on David’s hands as he restrains the turtle, its head retracting. The knife glistens. In an earlier scene, a sh was returned to the lake. Here, when the turtle extends its head, David severs it cleanly. Jamie walks in. Cut.
Grief buds here. Not at the funeral or in condolences, but when care is miscommunicated as violence. Jamie retreats to her game, which now mutates. The avatar pulls out her eye, melts and distorts.
Narin pulls her from this dissolution not through words but through parallel gestures. Together, they buy another turtle. Narin buys a snake plant, a species he’d earlier noted was enduring. Jamie releases this turtle into the water, its head caught in plastic, inching forward — perfectly positioned for one good chop — but then breaking free, returning home.
Myung communicates a visual language of interspecies relations and botanical persistence. Grief is rendered ecological: not contained within the grieving subject but distributed across species, objects and gestures. The turtle, the plant, the digital avatar — each absorbs what the subject alone can’t carry.
“So shell” laces together images of organisms in enclosures and bodies of water. Its structure is accretive: a sequence of adjacencies, doublings, acts of kindness that exhaust as much as sustain. Sibling relations become the lm’s only legible intimacy — recognition in presence rather than speech. It’s easy to mistake grief for desensitization. The grief Jamie can’t articulate arrives through the death of a turtle and the act of returning another to water. Not resolution, but recognition. The penny drops not when grief is spoken, but when it’s nally, ecologically, enacted.
SKYLAR WANG / THRESHER
CHI PHAM ASST. A&E EDITOR
COURTESY HOUSTON CINEMA ARTS FESTIVAL
‘ICONOCLASTS’ is Anna von Hausswol ’s anguished epic
KOSI ONWUAMAEGBU THRESHER STAFF
What makes an album truly cinematic? For many albums, this feeling is achieved by having a cohesive story from beginning to end, such as Electric Light Orcherstra’s “Time” or Kendrick Lamar’s “good kid, m.A.A.d city.” Although that approach to creating a cinematic album o en delivers excellent results, it’s not the only way to immerse the listener and make them feel like they’re witnessing a lm through a collection of tracks.
The second approach, which Swedish songwriter and musician Anna Von Hausswol masterfully uses, is creating music that feels dense — not necessarily dense in terms of lyrical content, but instead full of elements that remind you what music as an art form can achieve. The soaring violins and drums make you feel like you’re on a vast, sprawling landscape. The overwhelming, bombastic production puts you in the middle of a movie where you have no idea what happens next. The stunning, powerful vocal performance completely sells the emotion in the songs and makes you believe von Hausswol believes every word she says. Even without a strict narrative tying the lyrics of this project together, these elements still help “ICONOCLASTS” be not only a brilliantly written piece of music, but like an event.
While this album is impressive, it makes complete sense that the album would sound like it does, considering the rest of von Hausswol ’s career. Born in 1986, Anna von Hausswol ’s music consistently excels in being incredibly atmospheric and daring.
Never content with staying in one
style of music, her music has shi ed from classical-inspired gothic music reminiscent of Dead Can Dance to experimental rock, and then to completely organ-based minimalism. Throughout all of these shi s, her songs have remained incredibly dynamic and essentially selfcontained stories, full of emotion and growth at every minute. In that sense, “ICONOCLASTS” does not stray from her previous albums; however, it does stand out because it sounds like a culmination of them.
In the context of her previous work, it carves out a more rock-oriented sound, reminiscent of her 2018 album “Dead Magic.” Still, the structure of her songs is more similar to her earlier work, as well as her live performance at 2025’s Rewire Festival. The songs take on a life of their own and excel because of it.
The song “Struggle with the Beast” best demonstrates the strengths of this album. It’s an eight-minute epic with a thunderous saxophone and drumheavy introduction that gradually becomes noisier and guitar-heavy as it goes alonguntil nally reaching the verse at the three-minute mark. For the rest of the song, the intensity from the beginning appears and reappears in waves, supported by a passionate and anguished vocal performance. The entire song is truly a spectacle to behold, which also applies to the other longer songs on the album, such as “The Iconoclast” and
“The Mouth.”
“ICONOCLASTS” isn’t just an example of a modern cinematic album; it’s a showcase of how much emotion and artistry a musician can pour into such a project. Each song on this album is intricately produced and musically dense,
and they sound like raw expressions of anguish that only she could make. That’s the power of the album as an art form when it’s utilized to create a cinematic experience. More than just being a vessel to create a great piece of music, it’s a way for a musician to put their soul into music.
‘Frankenstein’ is injected with new masculine narrative
in the 2025 movie, it’s done in a cliché, almost Disney way.
being inherited patrilineally.
The violence of Frankenstein’s creature is scary because the creature was made by someone who came from a kind family, from the bodies of people who could have once been anyone’s friend. If we made the creature, and there’s something wrong with him, then there must be something wrong with us — that’s terrifying. But the movie lets us put most of the blame on Victor, so we’re o the hook.
never knew love — del Toro’s is allowed some, because if a woman didn’t care about him, how could the audience be engineered to?
Shelley’s “Frankenstein” approaches female representation di erently. For one, it’s written to a woman as a letter from the traveler who nds Victor to his sister. And she could feel re ected in the story: Shelley’s Victor is as much of a maternal gure as a paternal one, sacri cing his health to create new life, experiencing a kind of postpartum depression and panicking that this new life is his responsibility. Why make him an abusive dad?
It’s not very often that in 2025, a retelling of a 200-year-old story will have less of a feminist message than the original. But the new “Frankenstein” movie written and directed by Guillermo del Toro accomplishes this feat. Spoilers ahead.
Mary Shelley wrote “Frankenstein” as a teenager, but as a teenage girl watching the movie based on her book, I’d never related to anything less in my life. The adaptation is viciously intent on giving Victor Frankenstein daddy issues, probably so we don’t notice how much of an asshole this new Victor is. I’ll admit that the father-son angle is a classic — and it’s present in the original too — but
I can pretty much imagine “give Victor childhood trauma” scrawled on a chalkboard in a writer’s room. In Shelley’s novel, Victor’s father is never scary. He would de nitely never, as he does in the movie, in ict violence on his son for not remembering a random medical fact.
del Toro’s Victor is inspired by his own childhood abuse to abuse the creature, which he creates from body parts scavenged at an execution yard. This depiction of cycles of trauma and violence is far from unimportant. When Victor’s sister-in-law Elizabeth exclaims that men are dying for “elevated ideas,” it’s a good point. It’s just that it also feels like a cop-out to de ne violence as solely
The creature escapes from Victor’s abuse and lurks around a family, learning to speak, read and even philosophize all while rats crawl on him. When most of the family leaves, the creature befriends the blind old man who’s le behind. But this can’t last, as wolves come and kill the old man and the creature is blamed for his death and shot at by the returning family. Since the creature can’t die, he does the next best thing and ghts back.
The creature becomes aggressive, but the one person he doesn’t want to kill is Elizabeth. Her character, who irted with Victor by calling him depraved, is one of very few women in the lm. She sees the creature as a person and might even have a thing for him. When Victor sees Elizabeth talking with the creature, he tries to shoot the creature, but Elizabeth jumps in front of the gun.
Elizabeth clearly has her own thoughts and feelings, but she mainly exists as a mirror for the men in the story: she tells Victor he’s bad and the creature he’s good. Never mind that Shelley’s creature
One scene in the movie adaptation struck me, though. A young woman modeling for Elizabeth’s uncle takes a bite of a peach that was supposed to be just a prop. “Symbol of life and youth, and you bite into it?” she’s asked, and her response is “I was hungry.” I think she knows what she’s talking about. It’s easy to feel intimidated by men with European accents who want you to think they’re incredibly complicated, and maybe they are. But that’s another cop-out. Peach girl probably doesn’t hold the key to life like Victor, and still, she makes the simple decision to live.
I don’t resent the 2025 movie for having a di erent plot than Shelley’s novel, but I’m bitter about the spirit it lacks. I genuinely hope that in estranging some of the people who could see themselves in the tale, the movie brings in new people. There is something to be said for the fact that the creature is still alive at the end of the movie. On his deathbed, Victor says to the creature, “Consider this, my son. While you are alive, what recourse do you have but to live?” And the creature walks into the cold to do exactly that. Peach girl might approve.
KOSI ONWUAMAEGBU / THRESHER
Anna Von Hausswol performs “The Mysterious Vanishing of Electra” at the Rewire Festival in The Hague, Netherlands.
Top Track: ‘The Iconoclast’
CORA WAREH THRESHER STAFF
COURTESY NETFLIX
Nonbinary students navigate IM sports’ binary structure
ZAID RASHID FOR THE THRESHER
When creating a pro le to sign up for intramural sports online, students who select that they play as nonbinary are then faced with a follow-up question: Which league will you play in? The only options o ered are men’s or women’s.
Navigating gender identity within IM sports is a di erent experience for each nonbinary player. Charlie Maxson, a nonbinary athlete, has competed in coed ag football, women’s powderpu , women’s so ball and women’s basketball.
Editor’s note: Maxson is the Thresher’s backpage editor.
“I have never felt excluded by anyone externally,” said Maxson, a McMurtry College senior.
and sharing their pronouns. Maxson said when it was their turn, they only said their name and didn’t mention their pronouns.
“I feel like this is a woman’s space,” Maxson said. “I felt like I needed to be a little less open about it.”
Maxson said their friends approached them a er these icebreakers and asked why they didn’t share their pronouns. Their gender identity in this space was a complicated subject, Maxson said.
Although the IM sports program places binary limits on gender selection during registration, Lindsay White, a McMurtry College senior, said this wasn’t a problem for them.
“When I’m playing women’s sports, I don’t feel like I’m thinking about it much,” said White, a nonbinary athlete who plays IM soccer and powderpuff. “I’m just there and I want to
Callum Flemister, a Duncan College senior, said they have tried playing on both men’s and women’s IM teams. Flemister now competes in and co-ed volleyball.
“They both feel the same,” Flemister said. ”Whichever is going to give me less pushback socially and allow me to play and have fun is kind of the one I went
With nationwide debates on whether athletes should play with their sex assigned at birth, social attitudes can make nonbinary athletes feel unwanted in these spaces. For Maxson, that hasn’t
been the case in women’s programs.
“I do feel pretty comfortable playing women’s sports, because I feel like, even though this may sound contradictory, gender doesn’t come up that much,” Maxson said. “We are all just here to play football.”
In co-ed sports, issues around gender conformity can come up more because of certain rules that teams have to follow.
“I do consider it a little more with co-ed teams,” White said. “They’re like, ‘We need a certain number of men and a certain number of women on the eld at a time,’ so I would have to be considered one of the women on the team.”
Rules regarding male and female participation originally aimed to provide an opportunity for everyone to play, but for some, they have the opposite Flemister said that rules like these are e ective in theory, but the gender ratios o en make sports more exclusive. For example, IM volleyball has a rule requiring rosters to be at least 50% women.
On any given play, if only men touch the ball, the o ending team automatically loses the point.
“As a nonbinary person, that has been weird,” Flemister said. “I nitely just y under the radar as a ‘woman’ because a lot of times, I’m the breaking point number. It’s putting me between my identity and the deep love I have for playing sports.”
This fall, the IM program eliminated a previous rule that required a female player to be involved in at least every other play. During an Oct. 2 co-ed flag football game, after the rule was removed, the Thresher observed Duncan run all 29 of their plays without a female throwing or catching the football.
Flemister said they wonder if the rules about gender involvement are even necessary.
BEN SADOWSKI / THRESHER
McMurtry senior Charlie Maxson (left), McMurtry senior Lindsay White (center) and Duncan senior Callum Flemister pose with their equipment. All three are non-binary athletes playing IM sports.
Volleyball off to tourney
Rice volleyball concluded its 2025 regular season schedule Sunday following a pair of road victories against American Conference opponents. The Owls nished the season 19-8 (15-1 in conference) and will have the top seed in this week’s conference tournament.
• Rice enters the tournament on a 15-game winning streak, tied for the longest in program history.
• As the No. 1 seed, Rice opens the tournament against No. 8 University of Texas at San Antonio. The Owls swept both their matches against the Roadrunners this season.
• Rice versus UTSA is set for Friday, Nov. 21 at 10 a.m. on ESPN+.
• If Rice wins Friday, they will compete in the semi nal round Saturday at 11 a.m. The championship will be played Sunday at 12 p.m.
• The tournament champion will earn an automatic bid to the 2025 NCAA Division I Volleyball Championship.
When I’m playing women’s sports, I don’t feel like I’m thinking about it much. I’m just there and I want to play.
Lindsay White
MCMURTRY COLLEGE SENIOR
“A team of any one gender, the thing that’s not going to determine who wins
Historic Rice Stadium to downsize in campus construction
KAMILA EL MOSELHY FOR THE THRESHER
President John F. Kennedy stood before a packed crowd at Rice Stadium on Sept. 12, 1962, and delivered a bold promise that the United States would go to the moon.
On Jan. 13, 1974, the same stands hosted the roar of Super Bowl VIII, marking the rst time a Super Bowl was held at a college football stadium.
Stadium ushers such as Charles Straub, who worked at the stadium for 53 years, have vivid memories of their time at Rice Stadium. In an interview with the Houston Chronicle in 2000, Straub recalled Super Bowl VIII, saying the stadium looked like the Alamo on the nal day of battle. The crowds created one of Houston’s worst tra%c messes ever.
To me, it’s depressing in a way, because it’s like a fallen empire.
Sebastian Rodriguez MARTEL COLLEGE FRESHMAN
Today, only about 19,000 fans ll the stadium’s 47,000 seats on Saturdays. Even when 30,116 fans watched Rice’s Sept. 6 game against the University of Houston, setting Rice Stadium’s highest attendance in nearly 17 years, more than one-third of the seats were still vacant.
The faint scent of turf and popcorn lingers in the warm air as the sun bakes the aluminum bleachers. Wind whistles through the open stands, carrying faint echoes of cheers that once shook the concrete beneath fans’ feet.
“To me, it’s depressing in a way, because
it’s like a fallen empire,” said Sebastian Rodriguez, a Martel College freshman.
His sentiment is shared by many who have attended recent games, but also by the football players who call the stadium home.
“The crowd wasn’t really there,” said freshman edge rusher Dereyon Jenkins. “It was kind of like low energy. Not a lot of people.”
When Rice Stadium opened in 1950, it was the largest on-campus facility in the Southwest Conference and a symbol of Houston’s emergence as a major sports city.
For decades, it stood as the city’s primary large-scale venue. The Houston Chronicle celebrated its 50th anniversary in 2000, saying, “the grand dame of Texas stadiums is still the best place in the state to watch a football game.”
“I think the competition as a host venue became much tougher as other venues were built in the area, rst with the Astrodome, then Daikin Park and NRG Stadium, as well as the soccer stadium downtown,” said Chuck Pool, assistant athletic director of athletics communications.
Aside from installing turf in 1970 and aluminum benches in 2006, Pool said the stadium hasn’t gone through many radical structural changes. Its concrete bowl remains, built for a scale of sports fandom that Rice football no longer commands.
Some students, however, see the emptiness as a sign of changing campus priorities.
“I would say the majority of the Rice student body, from what I’ve seen, doesn’t really care about football culture.”
Rodriguez said.
Jenkins said that today, the history of the quiet stands carries a bittersweet weight.
“Knowing that my school has hosted such big events like that, especially a place that we play, a place that I call
home, it just makes me feel honored to be able to play here,” Jenkins said.
Rodriguez said Rice football could be seen as “outdated” and “more of like a historical thing at this point.”
But change is coming. Two weeks ago, Rice announced the Gateway Project,
Knowing that my school has hosted such big events ... it just makes me feel honored to be able to play here.
Dereyon Jenkins FRESHMAN EDGE
RUSHER
a massive remodelling effort that will modernize the stadium and connect the campus to Rice Village.
One of the most signi cant changes will be the reduction in stadium capacity from 47,000 to roughly 30,000 seats. The Gateway Project’s website says it aims to transform gamedays from vast sections of vacant concrete to a more intimate, energetic environment, according to its website.
When asked to imagine that future, Jenkins said he hopes Rice Football gets the recognition it desires.
“[I want to see] big tailgates, packed out crowds, like, you know, everything,” Jenkins said. “People having fun, a lot of noise, fireworks, you know, honking that horn every time we score and things of that nature.”
Linebacker cements legacy with nomination for top walk-on
ANDERSEN PICKARD SPORTS EDITOR
Andrew Awe arrived at Rice and walked on to the football team five years ago, but he didn’t play in any games until his third season.
Now the Owls’ leading active tackler, Awe was recognized for his ascension to stardom Nov. 4. The redshirt senior linebacker was named a nalist for the 2025 Burlsworth Trophy, which honors the most outstanding walk-on player in the Football Bowl Subdivision. FBS is the highest level of college football, comprising 136 teams across 10 conferences.
Awe said he first learned about the
nomination following a practice. He saw the news on Instagram, and although he had never heard of the Burlsworth Trophy, he quickly realized its importance.
“I was so grateful,” Awe said. “I never would have thought I had any type of nomination like that.”
The Mans eld, Texas, native was placed on scholarship in 2022 and started in the team’s season opener against No. 14 University of Southern California.
“Andrew came here as a walk-on corner who transitioned to safety and then to linebacker,” said defensive coordinator Jon Kay. “He’s a special player and a special human being. He doesn’t get enough credit for his athleticism. He can run at 240 pounds;
he’s strong and a football savant.”
Awe said that his versatility and experience playing multiple positions helped him become a well-rounded defender. Anticipating his teammates’ next moves has allowed him to play his own game faster.
Awe earned his first career sack last year and finished the season with 52 tackles. He has already shattered that mark through 10 games in 2025, totaling a career-high 78 tackles, 6.5 tackles for loss, 2.5 sacks and two passes defended.
His standout senior season is turning heads beyond the hedges. Awe, who said that he hopes to play in the NFL, is one of 79 FBS players nominated for the Burlsworth Trophy. He said he appreciates being recognized among the best players in college football.
“It shows that my e orts are paying o and I’m doing the right thing,” Awe said. “I am really happy to have this nomination, and just fully thankful for everyone that helped me along the way to get where I’m at today.”
The winner of this year’s Burlsworth Trophy will be announced Dec. 8. While Awe did not advance to the next round of nalists, he said his relentless style of play made him a worthy candidate for the initial nomination.
“I always try to get to the ball, always try to make an impact every game,” Awe said. “A lot of times, I make the play not even by making the tackle. I just feel like, because of my teammates and what I’m coached to do — being technically sound, able to use my hands, get o blocks — that I really am one of the best linebackers in college football. It would really be an honor for me to receive that award.”
In addition to Awe’s physical traits, Kay sees his mental fortitude and knowledge as some of the traits that make him a standout defender.
“There is nobody in this building, including the coaches, who is more uent in what we do defensively than he is,” Kay said. “He rights so many wrongs and is so even-keeled that nobody will even know it happened. There’s no panic to him at all.”
This combination of athleticism and intelligence has helped Awe, who majors in Computer Science, Psychology and Cognitive Sciences, anchor a Rice team making a late push for bowl eligibility. The Owls are one win away from clinching a bowl berth, but a pair of top American Conference opponents — the University of North Texas and the University of South Florida — stand in their way.
If you keep on working, doing the right thing and always trying to figure out a way to get better, then nothing can stop you.
Hard work always beats talent when talent doesn’t work hard.
Andrew Awe REDSHIRT SENIOR LINEBACKER
Like many seniors, Awe wants to leave South Main riding the high of a successful season.
“Before the season started, I was like, ‘I want this to be my best year,’” Awe said. “I just want to make an impact to not only reach a bowl game, but also help lead the team … and get a ring, as well, just to show the e orts of all the people that came before us and the seniors now.”
As Awe approaches the end of his collegiate career and prepares to pass the torch to a new generation of defensive anchors, he has a message for walk-ons looking to write a similar story.
“A lot of times, you may be doing the right things and working hard, but you won’t be shown until later,” Awe said. “If you keep on working, doing the right thing and always trying to gure out a way to get better, then nothing can stop you. Hard work always
when
doesn’t
beats talent
talent
work hard.”
KAIRI MANO / THRESHER
Three fans sit among dozens of empty bleachers in the second level at Rice Stadium during a football game Nov. 8 against the University of Alabama at Birmingham.
KAIRI MANO / THRESHER Redshirt senior linebacker Andrew Awe prepares for a play during Rice’s 27-21 loss against Florida Atlantic University on Oct. 4. Awe was nominated for the 2025 Burlsworth Trophy.
The Backpage is the satire section of the Thresher, written this week by Charlie Maxson, Rykelle Sandidge and Max Scholl, and designed by Brandon Nguyen. For questions or comments, please email realricethreshero cial@rice.edu.
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