The Rice Thresher, Vol. 88, No. 1, Ed. 1 Friday, July 21, 2000 Page: 2 of 12
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THE RICE THRESHER OPINION FRIDAY. JULY 21,2000
the Rice Thresher
Brian Stoler
Editor in Chief
Jose Luis Cubria,
Mariel Tam
Managing Editors
Michael Nalepa,
Gordon Wittick
Opinion Editors
An understandable departure
Three pairs of college masters unexpectedly left this year. We under-
stand all of their reasons, and we fault none of them for their decisions.
However, the last case, that of the Baker College Masters Jim and Chris
Copeland, has touched the members of the staff more than any other.
Our heartfelt sympathies go out to the Copelands. Every experience
Thresher staffers have had with them has been extraordinarily positive,
from Chris's help in setting up our Merrill Lynch money market account to
Jim's willingness to speak with us in the most difficult situations faced by
a master: the death of a student.
Our hearts go out to you. We admire your bravery in slaying for this
difficult year, and we thank you for your service to Baker and to Rice.
Presuming our preferences
The decision-making process for Rice's new student phone system
woefully and inexcusably left students out.
The Telecommunications Department scheduled two meetings with
elected student leaders — the college presidents and the Student Associa-
tion president — to discuss the phone system with them.
The first one was on October 5,1999. At that time, the phone system for
faculty and staff had not yet been completed, and the energies of Telecom-
munications were squarely focused on that project. Details about student
phones were vague. The conflict between call waiting and voice mail was
either not slated or not made clear.
There was no attempt to talk to student leaders again until the beginning
of June. At that point, it seemed as though the decisions had already been
made. Student Association President Lindsay Botsford and some of the
college presidents, coordinators and masters were informed at that meet-
ing about what the phone system could and couldn't support.
Discussion of the system's features was overshadowed by concerns
about billing — because as of the beginning of that meeting, Telecommu-
nications still planned to charge one member of every room for the phone
on her semesterly bill from the Cashier's Office. Their reasoning was that
the other people in the room could have their parents write checks to the
paying parent. This should have be everyone's first clue that Telecommu-
nications didn't consult with students. No student (or master or resident
associate) in his right mind would consider having one person's parents
pay for the phone and try to wrangle with her roommates' parents to try and
settle the bill.
In a Dec. 3 article in the Thresher, Network and Telecommunications
Director Farrell Gerbode stressed that students would be involved in the
process. "What we'll be doing will be trying to identify a group that will work
with the college presidents as a sounding board," he said. As far as we can
tell, this simply didn't happen at any point between October and June.
No SA president, college president, college master or resident associate
was consulted about the voice mail-call waiting conflict.
These are the people who have a unique perspective into the life of
undergraduate students. These are the people whom Telecommunications
should have consulted. So now we're left with a phone system that may not
best meet the needs of the students.
Remember, students didn't ask for this phone system. For better or for
worse, all students are now being forced to subscribe to Rice's telephone
service — creating a more complete monopoly than Southwestern Bell
ever had. No student was obligated to have a phone before. Ever-cheapen-
ing cell phones were always an option.
It is now Telecommunications' responsibility to find out whether or not
students actually prefer voice mail to call waiting. If they find out that
students would prefer call waiting, the situation should be fixed — this
year. The inconvenience caused for the department — reconfiguring the
phone system mid-year — is an unfortunate consequence of making
service decisions with no customer input.
The case for call waiting
We hope thatTelecommunications will find a way for voice mail and call
waiting to coexist. But if they can't, the student body as a whole should be
given the opportunity to choose which feature they want.
The student body should choose call waiting.
Call waiting can be rude — forcing you to interrupt phone conversations
to check the other line. However, its benefits far outweigh its disadvan-
tages, and in a situation of communal living, it can be an invaluable feature.
Imagine that you are expecting an important phone call — someone
hard to reach or who doesn't have a phone number at which to return a call.
You have to keep your roommates off the phone in order to be able to make
sure that the important call doesn't end up going to your voice mail.
Alternately, imagine that you are a freshman, thrust into college life in
a quad with three roommates you bc^ely know. One of them has a long-
distance significant other and insists on talking on the phone for hours each
night. You can't be reached when he's on the phone.
Most students who live on campus aren't lucky enough to have their
own rooms. Sharing a phone makes call waiting an indispensable feature.
No one misses important calls, and no one ends up resenting roommates
who spend a lot of lime on the phone.
And more importantly, voice mail can be reasonably duplicated with an
answering machine. Lots of phones have answering machines built in, and
lots of students already own them. They're not expensive. Not to mention
that answering machines have a blinking light to let you know when you
have a message.
Call wailing isn't a feature that can be replicated. You can't buy a
machine to get it. Only Telecommunications can do that.
We think the student body should demand it.
BRown
WILL
THese a Re thb ^no ioth coLLeer^s.
Guest column
Grad school advising needs improvement
So, what are you doing after you
graduate?'ITie question has haunted
a good many Rice undergraduates.
If you're an S/E, chances are
you've either found a job on your
own or have hundreds of
leads from any of Career
Services' weekly e-mails.
If you're an academ,
you may have found your-
self lured into consulting
or tech writing — or
maybe you're just coast-
ing, hoping for something
promising to come along.
Maybe you're one of
those lunatic people who
have given thought to ven-
turing into the undiscover'd country
of the post-commencement world
from whose bourn no traveler re-
turns: graduate school.
If you're thinking about applying
to grad school, I wish you luck —
and I pray that you're one of those
independent, do-everything-yourself
people, because, to tell you the truth,
Rice ain't gonna help you.
Jett
McAlister
What do you say to a
professor who has just
told you that you don 't
want to pursue his
profession ?
The Career Services Office can
help you find a job, and Academic
Advising can, presumably, advise
you academically, but there's a gap
at Rice when it comes to institu-
tional support for those who want to
pursue academic careers.
So while a large proportion of
Rice students can get assistance at
figuring out just what to do next,
their grad school-oriented peers are
left to navigate a twisted maze of
tests, applications, writing samples
and statements of purpose on their
own.
On the one hand, the system in
place of professors advising students
would seem to be a good place to
start when seeking grad school ad-
vice. And indeed it is: Professors in
a field can help you choose a good
list of schools to apply to, because
they know other people in their field.
Beyond that, they can give you help-
ful advice about what's important in
the application process, and their
recommendation letters are particu-
larly valuable.
I can't say enough good things
about how mv professors in the En-
glish Department helped me in my
grad school application process.
They went beyond their duty in help-
ing me choose where to apply, writ-
ing letters for me and giving me
general moral support throughout
the process.
But I was lucky. Even
in the English Depart-
ment, there are professors
who aren't so encourag-
ing — a friend of mine was
told by one of her profes-
sors, to her great amuse-
ment, that she didn't re-
ally want to go to graduate
school. What do you say
to a professor who has just
told you that you don't
want to pursue his profes-
sion?
Even with all the help professors
can give you, there's only so much
they can do in terms of actual con-
crete guidance. After all, it's been a
long time since many of them have
had to apply to grad school. I"hey
aren't — and shouldn't really be ex-
pected to be — up to speed on stan-
dardized tests, application deadlines,
financial aid and the like.
Unfortunately, there isn't anyone
at Rice telling prospective graduate
students to take their GRE tests in
the spring of their junior year (or
even that they should prepare to
take certain advanced GREs for
some programs).
There isn't really anyone out
there who makes it clear to people
that grad school is even a viable
option — at Rice, grad school is
more like an idea that you have to
stumble upon yourself— and then
decide if it's what you want to do.
True, we should act like respon-
sible adults and keep track of our
own damn applications. Those of us
who have gone to grad school from
Rice have done that.
But honestly, it wouldn't hurt
anyone to have a reliable resource
where you can get information on
graduate school.
Then consider that in each field
there can be several different de-
gree programs, each with multiple
concentrations or pathways, differ-
ent expectations and requirements,
different application processes —
the whole thing can become a giant
mess if you don't know exactly what
you're looking to do.
Rice wants to be a world-class
university. That's an admirable goal,
and I think it's got several good
things going for it. But one of sev-
eral things involved in realizing this
goal is helping to make academia a
more viable career option for its
undergraduate students.
I'm not saying that it should aban-
don helping people get jobs in "the
real world." But it should do more to
encourage and assist those wishing
to stay in the ivory tower of the
university system a bit longer.
Jett McAlister (Lovett '00), 1999-
2000 Thresher editor in chief, is a
graduate student in English at the
University of Virginia. He can be
reached at jett@alurnni.rice.edu.
There isn V really
anyone out there who
makes it clear to people
that grad school is even
a viable option.
Applying to grad school is at
least as complicated as applying to
college, and when you factor in
that you don't get to change your
field of study once you've started,
it can bt' more emotionally taxing
than what we all went through in
hi^h school.
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Stoler, Brian. The Rice Thresher, Vol. 88, No. 1, Ed. 1 Friday, July 21, 2000, newspaper, July 21, 2000; Houston, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth442986/m1/2/: accessed June 11, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Rice University Woodson Research Center.