Talk:Rice University

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[edit] Donation of land to NASA

According to the "fact or fiction" sallyport page which this article already cites, Rice did not donate any land to NASA. I will change this to reflect this text from that sallyport article: "Rice didn’t actually own the 1,000-acre plot 22 miles southeast of downtown but simply acted as a temporary intermediary in its transfer. Humble Oil and Refining Company gave the property to Rice in 1961 on the condition that the university offer it to the government to draw NASA to Houston. The free land sweetened a package put together by NASA board member and Rice alumnus Representative Albert Thomas ’20 and sealed the deal in bringing a manned space flight center to Texas." Sunbeam44 (talk) 03:18, 9 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Opening Line

First, the Princeton Review ranking is for the collegiate division only. Second, Rice came in third, which would not make it the highest. Needs revision.

[edit] revisions

After reading this page today (May 21, 2006), I made a number of edits to correct factual errors and to tone down the boosterism and overstatement that marred parts of the article. I am not finished, but posted these to be sure they were saved. Examples of changes include numbers: Reliant Park is 2 miles, not 5 miles, from Rice; there are 14 museums in the Museum District area, not "twenty or so"; and the campus is not 1/4 mile from Hermann Park, but directly adjoins it.

The "neo-Byzantine" architectural reference, while a familiar reference, is much more accurately replaced by a term like "eclectic Mediterranean." Ralph Adams Cram, the architect of Lovett Hall and the other buildings in the original set, referenced "eclectics" as his philosophy of design, and said that the original buildings he designed at Rice were concieved by becoming "familiar with what had been done around the shores of the Mediterranean: Syrian, Constantinean, Byzantine, Lombard, Dalmatian, French, Italian and Spanish Romanesque with a covert glance at the Moorish art of North Africa. . . ."

A number of factual corrections were taken from the Rice website, such as the current size of the endowment ($3.3 billion, apparently down from $3.7 billion), as is 20% (actually 18+%) of Rice students being National Merit Scholars. I identify "Rice Village" for those unfamiliar with Houston. Also, calling the Medical Center the largest "on the planet" is a claim not even the Medical Center itself makes, so I substituted something more accurate.

I changed language, probably inadvertent, suggesting that Rice excluded ethnic minorities prior to the mid-1960's charter change. In fact, the exclusionary clause was only applied to African Americans, according to "A Brief History of Rice" (Revised Edition), by John B. Boles, http://www.ricehistoricalsociety.org/history/bolesbook_10.asp. Boles states that "In keeping with the spirit of the times in which he lived, William M. Rice had specified in the 1891 charter that The Rice Institute was to provide a variety of means to educate the 'white inhabitants of the City of Houston, and state of Texas.' While out-of-state students had been accepted from the first and international students soon thereafter, Asian and Hispanic students—according to the racial protocol of the South—had been subsumed under the category of white. No black students had ever been admitted."

I also corrected various errors regarding the murder of William Marsh Rice. In particular, Albert Patrick was never Mr. Rice's lawyer, but was the New York lawyer representing Mr. Rice's opponents in a will contest over his late wife's estate. Additionally, Patrick was not the sole legatee under the will, which would been too obvious. Rather, he cleverly included Rice's natural kin in an effort to create natural allies to the will he and Mr. Rice's valet forged.

I felt compelled to mitigate in some way the article's puffing of Seventeen magazine's "coolest college" rating. U.S. News and World Report's articles are bad enough, but at least they are widely treated as relevant. Quoting Seventeen as some kind of authority on anything but lipstick, by comparison, has to be a bit excessive. I'm not sure it's toned down enough, but edited it enough to place some distance between the University and Seventeen.

I was embarrassed by the claim that Rice's colleges are similar to those at Oxford and Cambridge. If you don't believe this, do some reading and visit them. Rice has adapted some of their features, as have the Yale Colleges and the Harvard Houses, but the Oxbridge analogy is too strained to make sense. Additionally, the descriptions of college traditions are interesting but but a bit gushy, such as overuse of "unique." The writer of the original text appears to have been a Baker College student and someone totally immersed in college loyalties, so a little more balance in future edits would be a help.

I still need to change references to Baker College being the first college, and Will Rice being the first building constructed as a residential college. The original four men's colleges--Baker, Weiss, Hanszen and Will Rice--were all founded at the same time in the 1950s, incorporating existing as well as new buildings.

There is a lot more that should be said about Rice. I have a lot more editing and expansion to this article in mind, but have to get back to other things.


I think that the line about the first artificial human heart should be removed until some discussion takes place. The only sites I could find that mentioned Rice in association with the artificial heart were this document and documents internal to Rice. http://www.tsha.utexas.edu/handbook/online/articles/view/HH/sdh1.html claims that some of the first work done in this area was by Houston surgeon Michael E. DeBakey at the Baylor College of Medicine, with help, the articile claims, from engineers at Rice. So perhaps for now the article should say "Some of the first work on artificial hearts was done with the help of Rice faculty." What do you think?

This page has some issues. Take for instance the NPOV violation: "Rice is considered one of the nation's elite universities...". Also, "It is also distinguished by having one of the most selective student bodies in the nation" might do better as "Rice accepted X% of those who applied in 2003." Additionally some sentences could just be worded a little better: "...consistently ranking amongst the top echelon of national research universities". Finally, several of the people listed as Rice "alumni" dropped out without graduating. Frankly, as a Rice student, this page is a bit embarassing. I'll work on it a bit when I get a chance.

Re: Rice Alumni: Rice considers anyone who completed 2 semesters as an alumn, so those are probably okay.

I did my best to remove POV from the article. Feel free to tell me where I have erred. -Bih

As noted in the page history, I replaced references to 45/90/180 and the Institute's original name as these are all factual, interesting items that do not violate NPOV.

Mention of the sculptures is meaningless without a picture, and the MOB is not cool, but it's a fair comprimise. -Bih

What! No mention of Willy's Pub nor Valhalla!? For shame! Valhalla has its own website, should be linked. Unless things have changed, Baker 13 finishes at Valhalla. And the story of Willy's Pub burning down & being rebuilt is worth recounting also. -JJR (MA-'97)

Added some material on Willy's & Valhalla. -JJR (MA-'97)

Mentioning a flat percentage of accepted applications is a misleading way to report selectivity, since it assumes that applicant pools everywhere are of similar size and quality. While one could argue about better measures of selectivity (e.g. quality of freshman classes), just the percentage is insufficient absent more context. Rice generally admits a freshman class with similar statistics to those in an average Ivy League school, for instance, but Rice's acceptance rate is higher because it receives fewer applications (or rather, Ivy schools receive unusually high numbers of applicants).

It's worth noting in the article that Rice was recently ranked by the Princeton Review as the #1 ‘Best Value’ Private College. http://mbreleases.wordpress.com/2007/04/24/princeton-review-names-americas-best-value-colleges-in-annual-book/ I added this to the reputation but someone will need to add a reference (if I don't get around to it later)

--Substantiate 04:35, 28 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] List of Rice University people?

What do people think about moving the list of notable students, alumni, and faculty to a separate writeup as I've done for Case Western Reserve University (see List of Case Western Reserve University people)? Either way seems to be OK, just thought I'd suggest it, as many other universities are doing the same (Princeton, Harvard, MIT, etc). See Category:Lists of people by university affiliation for a full list of other schools with such lists. - Mark McCartney (talk) 17:33, 2005 May 25 (UTC)

[edit] Beanies

I would really appreciate any insight into the history of the beanies (and the Slime parade?) back when Rice was known as Rice Institute. Does anybody have that information? 70.240.186.146 02:14, 5 May 2006 (UTC)Mysticfeline

Thre is some info at this link: http://www.ricefootball.net/guidance.htm

You should check out "A History of Rice University: The Institute Years" Riceplaytexas 05:44, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Playboy

I think that recent playboy reference could use some citation. I just want it for the article, I swear. --Evan7257 21:42, 21 July 2006 (UTC)

I second this. When I visited Rice, my first experience at Baker as a prospective involved my host preventing me from entering his room because his roommate was having sex. This allegation is balderdash until someone can properly cite it! --Substantiate 03:57, 20 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] McMurtry College?

Anything else to add about McMurtry College? They haven't started construction yet, but there should be more to add soon. Evan7257 22:02, 10 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Turning of the statue in 1988 and other misc

Baker'88 - I don't remember any comments about a protest concerning tuition. At the time, our tuition was much lower than it might have been at other similar schools. I do however, remember more than a few references to wanting to have a picture of Willy with Lovett in the background. I don't recall if the picture was taken; but numerous comments about the less than attractive library building were made.

I have no idea where one might hunt down a real citation...

TShirst were sold, fine was paid, contractor damaged the statue putting it back.

Baker 13 was much more disogranized and I don't recall any running on the 31st.

I'll be back. Rwwff 09:21, 11 November 2006 (UTC)

Baker 13 definitely ran on the 31st 2000-2002, as my roommate was a regular. HFH '04 --69.7.175.177 13:25, 3 March 2007 (UTC)


When I was at Rice (1997-2001) I was told that the pranksters were upset about something the administration did, and they wanted to turn Rice's back on Lovett Hall. But according to the "fact or fiction" page by the sallyport which the article already cites, they just did it for fun. Sunbeam44 (talk) 03:15, 9 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] References section

Can anyone else see the references section and all the sections below that? I'm not able to see them when I read the article, but when I try to edit it, I can see all of them. --Blueag9 (Talk | contribs) 20:50, 14 March 2007 (UTC)

That was freaking me out, too, so I took a look. There was a missing </ref> tag at the end of the Trivia section. Fixed it. JFMorse 16:49, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] (very) long first sentence

That first sentence is pretty long. Most Wikipedia articles would probably put a period after "Houston, Texas, USA". The part of the sentence after that probably should not be in the first sentence of an international encyclopedia. Maybe create another sentence for that. I put the other names for the university in parenthesis (see the article on UT Austin). Just some suggestions.

[edit] Needs more academic substance, less trivia

The article here needs far more fleshing out of the academic programs of the university. This article gives readers the impression that Rice is all about booze, sex and mayhem, which is a grossly inaccurate portrait of the institution.

Also, many of the facts and figures are either years out of date or just plain wrong. The admission statistics for the current class (class of 2011) are not correct. The rankings statistics from the Times Higher Education Supplement (and others) are outdated.

I'd like to suggest that the authors consider the formats of better articles in this category as guidance. The articles for Johns Hopkins University and Duke University are particularly good.

Jlalbee 16:06, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Jacks

I think it bears mentioning the reason the administration was so upset by the statue turning - that Willie's ashes rest in the pedestal - so this particular jack resulted in the desecration of his grave. Rklawton 03:50, 7 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Campus Media

There is currently an edit war going on over the entries here for "Rice Standard" and "Open". They occasionally appear again, and then somebody comes along and deletes them, usually without giving an explanation. I have tentatively reinstated the passages on "Rice Standard" and "Open". The editor who deleted them commented "wikipedia is not free pr", but at this point we are not dealing with PR but with established magazines; if there is any PR going on here, it's probably in the RTV section, where we formerly devoted a whole paragraph to a show about cocktail-making (a show which is hosted by a regular Wiki editor). The "Standard" pretty famously has several enemies on campus, including the previously mentioned cocktail-brewing Wiki editor, which may be part of the trouble with the edit wars here.

Let's have a discussion here about the "Standard" and "Open" sections. I also suspect the "Thresher" part needs cleaning up ("small, dedicated staff" reeks of bias), and the overlong RTV5 passage (RTV5 is far from the most important of campus media) can be shortened. As currently written, with sources, the "Standard" and "Open" sections certainly seem worthy of inclusion in the Wiki, especially if we are also including things like UBlue (UWho?)... "Catalyst" receives a mention in the intro paragraph to the media section now, as well. 24.243.13.240 (talk) 17:02, 20 May 2008 (UTC)