The Rice Thresher (Houston, Tex.), Vol. 78, No. 28, Ed. 1 Friday, March 15, 1991 Page: 3 of 20
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THE RICE THRESHER FRIDAY, MARCH 15, 1991 3
Escape from big-time sports only cure for athletic department
Guest Column
by Thomas Haskell
Dr. Haskell addressed the follow-
ing letter to Dr. King Walters, Chair of
the Athletic Review Committee.
Dear Professor Walters:
Thank you for your invitation to
appear before the Athletic Review
Committee. This statement summa-
rizes and supplements the opinions I
will express verbally at the meeting
of 4 March.
Your committee falls heir to high
expectations on the part of the Rice
faculty. George Rupp assumed the
presidency of this university in the
wake of a powerful groundswell of
protest against his predecessor's plan
to establish "practicums," a thinly-
disguised shelter program for ath-
letes. Faculties are notoriously diffi-
cult to mobilize on any issue, but the
Rice faculty was genu inely galvanized
by this misbegotten plan. In what I
and many others think of as one of
his first official acts, President Rupp
committed himself to a five year re-
view of Rice's entire athletic program.
This was taken to be very good news
indeed by the large majority of the
faculty, who were then and are today
convinced that no university like ours,
with 2800 undergraduates and SAT
scores in the 1300's, can possibly
compete in the Southwest Confer-
ence without compromising its ad-
missions standards and distorting its
curriculum.
Now the moment has arrived for
the long-awaited review to take place,
but in the eyes of many of us there
are reasons to doubt that the review
will be what we were led to expect
Faculty respect for President Rupp
remains very high, and all the mem
bers of the review committee are
very well regarded on campus. Still,
the committee meets under a cloud.
Consider the facts. The review
committee was not appointed until
the year was two-thirds over, leaving
it little time to carry out its investiga-
tions. Its appointment was report-
edly delayed so that blue-chip foot-
ball recruits would not get wind of
the fact that Rice's place in the South-
west Conference is under review —
if true, an all-too-clear signal ofwhere
There is reason to doubt that a
committee formed in this manner
can carry out, in the short time allot-
ted, the thorough review of the ath-
letic program that the faculty ex-
pected and the university deserves.
Many of us now feel that we have
been too trusting. The abuses and
It is...irresponsible...to continue throwing good
money after bad, trying vainly to transform Rice
into what it is not...a semi-pro farm club.
the administration's priorities lie.
Even apart from convenient timing,
football coach Fred Goldsmith could
not have seen the committee as much
of a threat to the status quo: not only
was his contract extended and his
salary sweetened shortly before the
committee was formed, but two of
the six members of the new review
committee were drawn from the
search committee that hired him.
Three of the committee's mem-
bers, including its chair, are members
of the faculty, and this is questionably
reassuring. On the other hand, al-
though all three faculty representa-
tives are very highly respected on
campus, all either are, or recently
have been, members of the adminis-
tration. Their ability to speak for the
faculty has also been compromised
becau se they were appointed without
the advice, or even the knowledge, of
the Faculty Council. Except for the
committees of the Board of Gover-
nors, this appears to be the only
committee on campus whose mem-
bers were chosen without faculty
advice. The "cozy" quality of the ap-
pointments is also suggested by the
fact that five of the committee's
members either are, or soon will be,
alumni, who are by definition unlikely
to have first-hand experience with
the possibilities of life outside the
Southwest Conference.
Let taxpayers pick agency
by Chuck Yates
At the Constitutional Convention,
our Founding Fathers rightfully cre-
ated our government as a represen-
tational democracy. Transportation
and communication in 1791 simply
could not support a more popular
form of government. In fact, the
opening of the Constitutional Con-
vention had to be delayed several
days because rain caused muddy
roads and the horses and wagons
couldn't pass. A representational
government also made sense in 1791
because most citizens did not have
the educational background neces-
sary to govern the nation.
Tunes have definitely changed
since 1791. Education has become
widespread and even required in
most states to the age of 17. Telecom
munications, television, and other
technological advances have made
the United States a much smaller
place. In fact, a person can travel
from one coast to the other coast by
plane in a matter of hours. Quite
simply, we have reached a point in
time where technology and educa-
tion can allow for a more direct form
of representation.
Also, our Founding Fathers did
not envision the abuses of represen-
tational goveramentthatwould come
as the United States advanced. To-
day, Congressmen elected by the
people to represent the people abuse
the budgetary process and the aver-
age taxpayer just to insure their re-
elections. Take for instance the
franking privilege which is nothing
more than direct mail for a
Congressman's campaign. Clearly,
citizens should have and are capable
of more say in government, especially
the budgetary process.
Therefore, taxpayers should be
able to designate where their tax dol-
lars go. Let a person mark on his
1040 that all his tax dollars should go
to the Department of Education. This
would force department and agencies
to compete for their budgets, which
just couldnt be a bad thing. Agencies
would have to become more efficient
and produce products and services
more tailored to the public's will. In
turn, the public would have a mecha-
nism to help stop the pork barreling
and wastes now so prevalent in gov-
ernment Most importantly, govern-
ment would have to become respon-
sive to the people who fund its ac-
tions.
Volunteers Needed
Baylor College^ Medicine
Department of Dermatology
is recruiting volunteers for studies to treat:
• Eczema
• Hives
• Psoriasis
• Athlete's Foot
• Genital Warts*
Participants will receive FREE medication ,
and monetary compensation.
For more information, call 798-6921 or *798-4743.
compromises that Rice's participa-
tion in the Southwest Conference
necessarily entails have not gone
away; but by patiently waiting for this
five-year review (and in the mean-
time observing a self-imposed five-
year moratorium on criticism) we
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may have unfortunately contributed
to the illusion that problems no longer
exist, or that we no longer care about
them. The lesson has been learned;
we will proceed differently in the
years ahead.
I am not alone in feeling skeptical
about the prospects of a thorough
review. The Faculty Council has al-
ready expressed its unanimous dis-
pleasure with the manner in which
the committee was appointed, and
with the overlapping committee
memberships of its chair, a problem
that has now been rectified. At this
last meeting the Faculty Council also
announced, very wisely, I believe,
that it would appoint its own com
mittee to review the work of the
Athletic Review Committee.
At that meeting the Faculty
Council also endorsed four of the five
steps that I think ARC must take if its
review is to live up to expectations:
First, it should remain in session
however long it takes to carry out the
thorough investigation that was
originally promised, extending its
work into the summer and fall if need
be.
Second, it should promptly an-
nounce what investigations it plans
to carry out, and those investigations
should include all the problem areas,
such as honor code violations, that
were identified in the 1983 Self-Study.
Third, it should make public a
thorough accounting of the financial
impact of the athletic program on the
university, including the amount al-
located to athletic scholarships. This
should include for comparison a re-
port of athletic program expenses at
schools comparable to Rice that play
in divisions other than I-A
Fourth, the committee should ini-
tiate an exploration of options for
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The 1990-91 President's Lecture Series
Jane Goodall
An Evening with Jane Goodall:
The Chimpanzees of Gornhe
World-famous zoologist and anthropologist June Goodall has been acclaimed for
her daring studies of chimpanzees in the remotest wilds of Africa. Last year, an
HBO special, Chimps: So Like Us. celebrated her 30 years of studying the
chimps of Tanzania's Gombe National Park.
Goodall, who still has the toy chimpanzee she was given as a baby .' has said
she always loved animals. At age 7, after reading The Story of Dr. Doolittle.
Goodall decided that someday she had to go to Africa.
In 1957, when Goodall was in her early 20s, she traveled to Kenya to visit.a
friend. She stayed on and was hired as an assistant to Dr. Louis Leakey, famed
curator of Kenya's natural history museum. lie gave her the opportunity to
study a group of chimpanzees on the eastern shore of Lake Tanganyika.
Author of several books about her work with the chimpanzees and other
animal research in the wilds, including the bestseller In the Shadow of Man,
Goodall recently published the first volume of a scientific monograph on her
years of research. The Chimpanzees at Gornhe.
In an effort to save the world's dwindling population of chimps. Goodall
founded the Jane Goodall Institute in 1977 and gives lectures throughout the
world to "try to help these creatures who can't speak for themselves but who
are so much like us."
Wednesday, March 20, 1991
8 o'clock p.m.
Rice University Memorial Center Grand Hall
Admission: No Charge «
Seating rapacity is limited. Tickets available at the door. First come, first served.
This Lecture is sponsored by the President of Rice University as part of the President"
Lecture Series for 1990-91 and is supported through the J. Newton Kayzor Fund.
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Moeller, Kurt & Yates, Jay. The Rice Thresher (Houston, Tex.), Vol. 78, No. 28, Ed. 1 Friday, March 15, 1991, newspaper, March 15, 1991; Houston, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth245779/m1/3/: accessed May 2, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Rice University Woodson Research Center.