| Traditions | |
- “Screw Your Roommate” : Annual Rice Program Council event in which people set up their roommates on a blind date and brainstorm creative ways for them to meet (e.g., find each other in the massive crowd that gathers on the quad). The Meet Sheet is an excellent resource to pick out potential dates. An example of a set-up: woman dressed as Princess Jasmine meets a man wheeled in on a cart, dressed as Aladdin and singing “A Whole New World.” At worst, the night is a bad date and a way to meet someone new; at best, people have actually found true love!
- Baker 13 : The proud Rice tradition of stripping naked, covering your body in shaving cream, running all around campus, and leaving body prints on various glass plate windows. Takes place on the 13th, 26th, and 31st of every month. If it is 10 p.m. on any of these days, and you catch the faint scent of shaving cream in the air, get indoors very quickly. The runners will usually try to break into the residential colleges to leave prints on the inside, but are usually met by fierce (and often creative and borderline cruel) resistance. A few things to note: they will try to convince you to join them by chanting in zombie-fashion, “Join us!” The two unofficial rules of Baker 13 state that they can’t touch you, and they must stop for all photo requests.
- Bakerfeast : B-feast is “rumored to be a party,” and you might not get much more information than that from anyone that has attended. This medieval-themed event dates back to the days when Jones Residential College housed only females, and Baker College housed only males. The Baker lads invited the Jones ladies for a formal feast in their swank commons. Only Baker and Jones seniors (and lucky 21-year-old invited guests) are invited to attend this costume event. The only further information to give you is that food and drinks are free flowing, and the “rumor” is OH-so-true.
- Beer Bike : By far the most-hyped event on the Rice social calendar, more alumni return for Beer Bike than for Homecoming (at least, more young alumni). Undergrads begin prepping for this springtime event sometime in the fall. To break it into its simplest components: Beer Bike is a relay race of 10 bikers per team (men, women, and alumni) from each of the residential colleges and the GSA (graduate student association). These bikers are joined by a team of 10 chuggers, who stand on a platform near the bike pit as each bike comes in, and must chug 24 (male) or 12 (women and alum) ounces of water or (yuck) warm and flat beer before the next biker can leave the pit. Most colleges (with the exception of Wiess) select a Beer Bike theme, print T-shirts, dye hair, paint faces, and more. They also fill water balloons—thousands and thousands of water balloons. These will be used for what will undoubtedly be the wildest, craziest, most painful, and fun water balloon fight of your life. The Beer Bike parade that heads from Lovett Hall to the bike track erupts in a colorful and wet exchange of ammunition between the colleges. Imagine it: almost every undergrad student at Rice participating in a cross-campus balloon fight. Oh yeah, it is that sweet.
- Fountain tossing : Namely involving the Fairy Fountain and Mecom Fountain—this tradition is mainly popular with members of the North Colleges (Martel, Jones, and Brown) because of their closer proximity to the Fairy Fountain. If you should be lucky enough to have a birthday during the school year, you will be hunted down when you least expect it (or perhaps exactly when you expect it), and nabbed, carried, and tossed into the Fairy Fountain. The general idea is that you should run, fight, or resist, but not to the point of hurting anyone.
- NOD (Night of Decadence) : Cited by both "Playboy" and "Rolling Stone" as one of America’s top-10 college parties, NOD has actually gotten a bit tamer over the last few years, due to the influence of a few concerned faculty members. Thrown by Wiess College every year around Halloween, the party usually sponsors some witty play-on-words theme, such as: “Wizard of Nod,” “Nod to Authority,” “NeverNeverNod,” “NODty or Nice,” “2001, A Space Nodessy.” The goal is basically to wear the least possible amount of clothing and still somehow fit with the theme. If you want an alternative activity for the evening, a lot of students choose to volunteer to work security, remain clothed, and look after their peers (if you are lucky, they might let you use walkie-talkies or gnome carts!).
- O-Week (Orientation Week) : This is the week before school starts in the fall, intended to welcome and acclimate Rice freshmen and transfers. While you will have to sit through a number of semi-boring discussions and meetings about policies, schedules, and more, O-Week is really fun. You will be assigned to a random group of students from your residential college and to several upperclassman advisers who will be your guiding light in times of darkness or confusion. You will also get to experience exciting O-Week activities within your college, like scavenger hunts, fun mixers, mock beer bike, skits, and broomball. Don’t expect a lot of sleep this week, but come with an open mind and get ready to meet amazing people and have a great time!
- Sallyport : At matriculation, during O-Week your freshman year, you will be marched through the Rice Sallyport, a large archway in Lovett Hall. You will walk from the opposite side of Lovett Hall into the quad. You are greeted on the other side by a group of cheering advisers. This is symbolic of your entry into Rice. The tradition is that students cannot walk back out through the Sallyport again until the day of graduation. After receiving your diploma, you walk from inside the quad, through the Sallyport, to the opposite side of Lovett, where your cheering friends and family members will greet you. The story goes that if you should walk through the Sallyport again at all during your undergraduate career, you will be cursed and will never graduate from Rice. Even if you don’t believe in such superstition, the walk out at graduation is especially rewarding if you have actually waited the entire four years.
- Willy Week : This is the week leading up to Beer Bike. Rice Program Council schedules events and TGs throughout the week, giving away T-shirts and other Rice paraphernalia. Also, it’s crunch time for Beer Bike preparations, and the most popular time to play "jacks" on rival colleges. Students try to infiltrate other colleges, locate their stash of water balloons, and steal or destroy them. Many colleges have Willy Week vigilantes who stand guard, wearing camo until all hours of the night to protect from balloon raids and other "jacks."
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| Urban Legends | |
- A group of engineering students in 1988 decided that they were fed up with some recent decisions made by the administration and concocted a plan to rotate the 2,000-pound statue of William Marsh Rice (located in the quad) 180 degrees, making Willy face Fondren Library for the first time in 58 years, thus turning his back on the administration. The students elaborate plan was simulated on computers and tested off campus on a 2,250-pound Toyota. According to legend, they removed the lights around the quad two weeks prior to the prank, so that they could work in the dark without drawing attention. They also convinced campus police that the large A-frames used to rotate the statue were part of a school project, and were given a police escort to Entrance 8 when hauling the frames back onto campus after testing. The way the legend goes, the plan worked beautifully, except that one student, Patrick Dyson (’88) was caught. The University hired a group of real engineers to turn the statue to its rightful position, but these engineers somehow managed to damage the statue in the process (they claim the damage was done by the students). Dyson was given the responsibility of paying for the repair cost, as well as the cost of the engineering team. Students rallied behind Dyson. They printed and sold T-shirts that read, “Where There’s A Willy, There’s a Way," and actually made a profit after reimbursing the University. What took the Rice students one hour and $400 to do took professionals three hours and a rumored $1,500 to $2,000 to undo.
- One of the most classic and notorious Rice legends is simply the story of the mysterious demise of our founder, William Marsh Rice. Rice’s valet, a man named Charles Jones, conspired with a crooked attorney, Albert Patrick, to kill Rice on September 23, 1900 and claim his fortune using a forged will. An autopsy, ordered by Rice’s attorney, Captain James A. Baker (founder of Baker college), revealed evidence of poison. Jones testified against Patrick in order to receive immunity from prosecution, and in 1901, Patrick was convicted of murder and sent to Sing Sing. He was pardoned in 1912. Baker’s actions allowed for Rice’s actual will to be followed, and his estate left to the founding of Rice University. Rice’s remains are buried under a large statue in the University Quad.
- Rice pranks, or “jacks” are numerous. Some are clever while others are simply vile. One group of Brown College students once went out to eat at an all-you-can-eat Chinese buffet, and then snuck over to Baker College, where a Shakespeare production was underway. The students forced themselves to vomit all around the Commons and entrance areas to the building. Another prank, rumored to be motivated by the same Brown “mastermind,” resulted in all the plumbing to Jones College being shut off for nearly a full day. In addition to preventing students from practicing good hygiene, the news of the prank did not travel fast enough to prevent several students from using the toilets, leaving an unpleasant smell to linger for the rest of the afternoon. For more historic Rice pranks, visit http://staff.rice.edu/staff/Pranks.asp.
- The guy running Baker 13 went through a library window naked covered in shaving cream.
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