The Rice Thresher (Houston, Tex.), Vol. 79, No. 4, Ed. 1 Friday, September 13, 1991 Page: 2 of 24
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2 FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 13, 1991 THE RICE THRESHER
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New enforcement boots
students to "big ugly"
Be careful where you park. Associate Vice-President of Finance and
Administration Neill Binford and the Campus Police began strictly enforcing
existing penalties on students parking in staff lots on August 30—including
a new policy to place boots on improperly parked cars in faculty lots and tow
repeat offenders. Binford said he hopes the plan can also be implemented in
student lots within a month.
These new boots will incapacitate any unregistered vehicle after the third
ticket The owner must pay all back fines and register the car to have the boot
removed. On the fourth ticket of an unregistered car or third ticket of a car
bearing a student lot sticker, the car will be impounded to a lot off campus.
If the offender is, in fact, a "legitimate" visitor, the boot will be removed and
the driver given a temporary parking permit
The plan, in principle, is fine—stop students from parking in the staff lots
and, eventually, keep medical center "visitors" out of the student lots. The
present parking situation is inefficient, and many people suffer repercussions.
Rice has added graduate students, undergraduates, and about300faculty and
staff in the past decade, while turning prized parking lots of the past into five-
star research facilities.
Students, however, are last on the totem pole (behind even visitors, who
don't have to pay tickets anyway) as far as parking space delegation goes. The
plan will hopefully at least guarantee availability of more student spaces once
it covers student as well as faculty lots.
In the meantime, the system has a few flaws.
Presently, penalties are directed at people parking in faculty lots. The
parking problem, however, is not confined to the faculty lots. Off-campus
students, the principle offenders in these lots, often find themselves "jacked"
out of designated commuter lots because freshmen, upperclassmen without
parking permits, and other unregistered cars poach their spots. In addition
to the commuter spaces, the parking lots outside residential colleges
(especially at Lovett and Sid Richardson) often are thoroughly clogged"
because so many non-Rice people leave their cars there. If these "illegal
autos" in both commuter and residential lots were towed at the same time as
those in faculty and staff lots, students would have spots in which to park
during the "parking purges."
The alternative to breaking parking rules is parking in the stadium.
Binford said anyone whose designated lot is full should always go to "the big
ugly." The stadium trek is a long one, especially in hot or rainy weather, and
the shuttle bus system is not especially publicized, regular or reliable.
Though renting more buses might seem the obvious solution, Binford said
this year's budget was set last summer, and that additional money cannot be
allocated until July 1992.
Another weakness—there is no incentive for students to register their
cars under the new enforcement of existing university policy. (Rice has
always reserved the right to tow.) In fact, unregistered students have an extra
grace period before being towed off campus, since it's four strikes before
they're out in that league. One solution: increase the fine for the boot to
exceed'the cost of being towed. This might even create enough revenue to
rent a second shuttle.
The review committee which met this summer never came up with any
such recommendation, though: no students, graduate or undergraduate,
were on the committee, although Binford said Vice President for Student
Affairs Ronald Stebbings was included on the committee to represent student
views.
The students received little notification of the policy change. As it stands,
the offending students receive warning notices along with their tickets, but
otherwise the system has received little publicity.
As an important step in a comprehensive solution to the parking crisis, the
new towing procedures should clear up any gray areas in parking rules, and
clear the lots of unwanted vehicles. We'll wait to see how effective the new
system is, and how long it takes to get a usable, reliable shuttle system up and
running. If it works, great In the meantime (while we wait for equal
enforcement in faculty and student lots), we're short on spaces everywhere
except "the big ugly."
Harlan Howe, Ann Zitterkopf
Editors-in-Chief
Dave Mansfield
Business Manager
OPINION
Darrell Speck Editor
Mark Bennett Columnist
Steven Bryant, Jason Martinez, Mark
Schoenhals
BACK PAGE
Heidi Huettner Editor
Jake Skankin', Bill Tanner, M. Wasz
Cartoonists
SPORTS
Peter Howley Editor
Tom Harris, Wilbur Lam, Jason Martinez,
Jason Okerman, Monica Weinheimer
<t Production
Josh Denk Manager
Tom Anderson, Bryan Jones, Bill Mark,
Eric Ruhlin, Jennifer Tackman
BUSINESS
Shane Speciale Ads Manager
Chris Cowles Assistant Business Manager
George Nickas Ads Production
Hector Avila Distribution
©COPYRIGHT 1991
The Rice Thresher, the official student newspaper at Rice University since 1916,
is published each Friday during the school year, except during examination
periods and holidays, by the students of Rice University. Editorial and business
offices are located on the second floor of the Ley Student Center, P.O. Box 1892,
Houston, Texas, 77251. Advertising information available upon request. Mail
subscription rate per semester: $15.00 domestic, $30 international via first
class mail. Unsigned editorials represent the majority opinion of the Thresher
Editors. All other pieces represent the opinion of the author. Obviously.
Chad Carson
Managing Editor
NEWS
Amy Keener Editor
Jill Salomon Assistant Editor
Jonathan Briggs S.A. Correspondent
Anne ChettJe, Sam Cole, Shaila Dewan,
KraettK Epperson, Erin Gainer, Steve
Jones, Wilbur Lam, Michelle LeRoux,
Shala Phillips, Michelle Price, Zane
Williams
ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT
I^eezie Kim Editor
Shala Phillips Assistant Editor
Ross Grady Columnist
Chad Hersh, Eric Garland, David Hale,
Ashley Kim
PHOTOGRAPHY
Chris Sonnebom Editor
Eric Hahn Assistant Editor
Mike Gladu, Barbara Solon, James Yao
FEATURES
Shaila Dewan Editor
Phone-527-4801
OUT™'UWTS,
2a
Library closes doors to seekers of quiet
weekends are another story alto-
gether. The colleges seem to become
dens of anarchy. There are T.V.'s,
Where are we to go?
To the editors:
We feel we must complain!
We returned to school this fall,
from a long summer of work, only to
be surprised and disappointed by the
following realization: the library has
changed itshours!!!Theyarereduced
on weekends!
Some of us at this school (and we
seem to be a distinct minority) don't
feel that life is to be taken lightly, nor
do we feel that the majority of it
should be spent in a drunken stupor.
We are open minded people, and we
can accept the fact that so me perso ns,
indeed students of this very institu-
tion, have not yet come to share our
priorities in how they spend their
time. However, just as we are patient
and understanding of their
squanderous soirees, so also we
would like to be free to spend our
time in the manner we see fit, namely
in pursuit of higher knowledge. To
this end, we feel we are being de-
prived by the abbreviated hours of
Fondren.
During the week, the problem is
not so pronounced, as most students
appear capable of conducting them-
selves in an appropriate manner.The
THE EDITOR
Letters
Everyone top-notch at
Rice campus store
To the editors:
Thank you for the kind editorial
words in the last issue of the Thresher.
I would like to take this opportu-
nity for additional thanks.A lot of the
credit goes to the dedicated em-
ployees of your bookstore. Aaron
Brown is responsible for installing
the point of sale program. He keeps
us up and running which involves
many late nights at Rice. Mary Brown
and her staff did an outstanding job
of getting the books ready and
shelved on time. Every bookstore
employee contributed to smooth
running because we want the best.
As for the co-op, it is a good idea.
Not to "Beat the bookstore," but to
save students money on books. Stu-
dents have always bought books from
each other. Like shopping garage
sales rather than shopping the mall,
each has its place, not to be com
petitive but to peacefully co-exist.
Pam Horton
<>
Manager
Rice Campus Store
stereos, and electric guitars blaring
nearly constantly. People are party-
ing and yelling at all hours. Last year
this nonsensical behavior was toler-
able, for Fondren offered respite on
Iiriday evenings until 12 a.m., and on
Saturdays until 1 a.m. This is no
longer the case. Fondren is no longer
the sanctuary it once was. Its hours
are now only until 10 p.m. on both
_nights! And at 10 p.m. the chaos of
the colleges is far from ceasing.
Where are we to go?
We understand that there may be
budget considerations that we are
unaware of, but the money saved by
having the librarians work a few less
hours is surely insignificant com-
pared with what is being sacrificed.
Not only are we losing a place of
refuge from the states of confusion
known as colleges on weekend
nights, but more importantly, our
grade points are endangered.
Jim.Koutras
Jones '92
Craig Huang
Jones '92
Micheal Michealides
Jones '92
Morning after unpleasant for everybody
by Jason Martinez
You're walking to brunch on
Sunday. You've had a hard night —
hell, you just barely dragged yourself
out of bed in time to make brunch.
Then again, it was either get up, face
the possibility of going O.C. or eat
the half a Lunchable & bottle of
Tropicana that's been sitting in the
fridge since Tuesday.
Well, proud that you made it
through the first weekend without
any trouble, you come upon the last
thing on earth you want to see while
walking through the Baker quad —
beer cans, party balls, cigarette butts,
empty cups and, best of all, a path
adorned with somebody's chunky
rejection of what appears to be a bad
mixture of red punch and aTwo Peso
order of numbers forty-three and
forty-five — evidence of a night that
would have put Bacchus himself in a
toilet As you hurry through the area
before the nausea sets in completely,
you write-off the squalor as first
weekend lunacies.
This is, of course, until the next
Saturday morning when you see the
same disarray on the way to brunch,
with the notable exception of this
week's path decoration being com
posed of beer and an apple pie k la
mode from House of Guys. Maybe a
pattern, maybe not. But, as you give
a campus tour to drooling
prospectives with rolled-up Money
magazines in their sweating palms,
you stop at Willy's statue to tell the
story about how the butler did it to
Willy and then how the engineering
students did it to him. You catch a
purse-lipped mother eyeing the Little
King's bottles on our benevolent
benefactor's lap.
Everyone calls Wee home, and
it's a shame that they don't treat the
grounds as their true home. Some
students have even commented that
the beautiful grounds influenced their
choosing Rice. Said Joey Olivier, "If
the campus would have been ugly, I
would never have chosen Rice."
Trashing the colleges' quads is
also illegal and offensive to those
who aren't a part of these parties —
faculty, RlA's, and Masters and their
children. Furthermore, the
groundskeepers shouldn't be ex-
pected to pick up after us. And finally,
these weekly trashings also give a
greater impetus to the movement to
make Rice a d-d-dry campus (oh,
please stop littering, please, please,
please 0-
Now, at the risk of sounding like
Robert Fulghum, I have a couple of
suggestions.
Throw away your beer cans in
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Zitterkopf, Ann & Howe, Harlan. The Rice Thresher (Houston, Tex.), Vol. 79, No. 4, Ed. 1 Friday, September 13, 1991, newspaper, September 13, 1991; Houston, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth245789/m1/2/: accessed May 5, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Rice University Woodson Research Center.