Jack Hardcastle

“Congratulations on completing a rigorous, four-year education at an internationally renown University of the highest caliber. Please accept this plastic tube and enclosed poster. Next.”

In the time that I have been here nothing Rice has done has infuriated me as much as this latest insult. Instead of receiving our diplomas at Commencement, the University will present us with some inconsequential token until the real documents can be printed and mailed home six to eight weeks later, as though we had ordered x-ray vision goggles out of the back of a comic book.

They have offered a dozen different excuses for this, and they all vary depending on which administrator you talk to. I was told by one that it was a money issue. The next told me the money wasn’t a problem, but that the manpower required is too great and the logistics challenge is becoming insurmountable. The third said that the outcry from alumni who inadvertently destroyed their diplomas last year was the biggest factor.

It turns out that champagne is the number one cause of death for sheepskin diplomas. It is followed in a close second by “beach ball damage.” This, and this alone, is the primary reason we will not be receiving our diplomas this May 13. “About 30” of last year’s alums complained that they destroyed their diploma by spilling something on it, beating beach balls with it, or in transporting home. Let me just say that if you cannot be trusted to protect and cherish your diploma then you are not worthy of the honor it bestows. Perhaps the University should hold on to yours; they can keep it in the basement of the Allen Center, under glass, and you can visit it during business hours.

By mailing it home, the University is able to order the diplomas the Monday after Commencement. They figure they can save us the trouble of having to transport them by mailing them to our parents’ homes. What about those students (surely a sizable proportion) who will not be home eight weeks after graduation, and who do not yet know where they will be? How many students stay in the Houston area because of jobs, or go to some other city because of graduate school? Mailing the diplomas doesn’t save Rice any logistical or economic costs, and still places a transport burden on hundreds of graduates. Rice isn’t doing this for us - it’s doing it to be just like other schools. Schools smaller than Rice give out diplomas as Commencement, and schools much bigger than Rice do not. This university has a Napoleon complex about itself. It feels that it is a big university trapped in a small university’s body. Wrong. We are a small university, and we need to embrace it. We are not “on the cusp” of some divide between the tiny liberal arts colleges and the big 50,000-student state schools. We are a small, well-rounded university with a lot to offer. We should praise the fact that we take good care of our students (both graduate and undergraduate) instead of trying to be just like our older, bigger cousins on the coasts. I don’t care if other schools don’t give out diplomas at Commencement. We are not other schools, and we need to stop compulsively comparing ourselves to them. I did not come here because I wanted a Harvard-like education. I came because I wanted a Rice education.

This disaster was made possible because the administration does not foster communication with the students. Nobody in the Registrar’s office ever bothered to contact anyone besides the Student Association President when this decision was made last summer, and with all due respect to the outgoing administration, it did not accurately represent the 1200 graduates this year. The college presidents weren’t even asked to comment on the issue until after the point-of-no-return. This decision should have been made public at the first possible opportunity, not a month before graduation. Rice has done a lot of aggravating things that I can recall - dozens that I was personally witness to. However, this is a truly unforgivable error at the cost of our class. This affront will leave a bad taste in my mouth for the rest of my life. Development Office take note: don’t expect much from the Class of 2006. Perhaps I’ll just mail you a poster in six to eight weeks.

Jack Hardcastle, Wiess senior

Jack,

1:39AM? Actually I thought of you and Lisa as I was logging off at 12:20AM. Thank you for contacting me. I meant to get an e-mail out to the two of you on yesterday as an update to our conversation.

I enjoyed our meeting from a couple weeks ago. It again brought up for me the myriad of emotions that I have felt regarding this issue. I appreciated your candor, honesty and your offer to assist us, if that would be needed. Since our conversation I have talked again with others, most notably the diploma company. The reality of our situation now is that the company does not have enough time to print, proof and send us the diplomas in time for commencement. Our diploma order usually goes in on March 1st. In turns out that at the time that we spoke, it was already too late for the diploma company to guarantee delivery in time.

I realize that this is not what you wanted to hear. I understand your sentiment that Rice is a community, a small one, and the actual receipt of diplomas at commencement is (and has been) a special thing. In re-reviewing the data behind this decision, I do think that there are advantages for all with this change. But I recognize that there is a sense of loss as well, and this loss saddens me too.

Thank for your understanding.

–David Tenney

and my response…

David,

With all due respect, this is wholly unacceptable. This cannot ever happen to another class. The receipt of diplomas at graduation is not a “special” thing, it’s a necessary thing. Bigger schools get away with it because they treat their students like numbers and second class citizens for four years before graduation. I don’t think Rice should get in the habit of doing that. I’m not terribly interested in the “data” behind the decision. That will not put a sheepskin in my hand on May 13th. We were told that money’s not the issue, the manpower can be addressed, and less than a third of students have to get their diplomas reprinted because of “Honors” or damage. The Honors students are receiving just that, a great honor, and can stand to have their diplomas delayed – it’s worth it. The damaged diplomas come about from sheer lack of attention, and demonstrate an incalculable level of disrespect towards the culmination of a Rice education. Perhaps those students should have their second diploma kept under glass in the basement of the Allen Center where they can view it during business hours.

I mean you gentlemen no disrespect, but I believe this University has made a nearly unforgivable error at the expense of the Class of 2006 without ever asking for our input until it was truly too late. The College Presidents were not contacted until after March 1 when it was already too late, and the student body at large was never told about it at all.

Please let this letter serve as fair warning that I do not intend to let this issue die in my last 50 days here as a private citizen. This is a horrible, terrible outcome and I regret that it comes to this, but I do not want to see a single Junior even have to think about this problem next year. This is a no-brainer, folks.

Jack Hardcastle

If I understand the circumstances regarding last week’s incident in which a Rice student was pulled from a classroom (“Student criticizes Rice Police after being removed from class,” Feb. 17), then I feel obligated to support the Rice police.

I’m not doing this because fear for my safety is coercing me to relinquish my Constitutional rights.

I think our right to be protected against unreasonable search and seizure is sacrosanct, and I disagree with anyone who feels we should give up our rights in these troubled times to ensure our safety.

I’m doing this because I feel that the manner in which the officer responded was proper and I can imagine only minor changes.

I echo the praise given by some senior administrators that Rice hasn’t “racialized” the issue. I would hope that if the description included a Caucasian suspect instead of an African-American one that I too would be under scrutiny and would receive similar treatment (although I think a 6 foot 6 inch tall boisterous overweight bearded male would make a terrible thief). I recognize that Rice has a terrible history of discrimination, and I do not wish to see that resurface. If Mr. Callahan was treated differently because of his skin color I too would be outraged, but it does not appear to be the case here.

I’d like to discuss the other half of this incident; a Rice University Police officer entered a classroom after seeing an individual who, for all intents and purposes fit the description of a thief, and removed him temporarily for questioning. Immediately after being identified as someone other than the robber, the student was released.

Should the officer have entered the classroom and removed the student? Should the student have been put in front of a make-shift lineup before an eyewitness? Should the student have been a suspect in the first place? Yes, and no.

How was the officer to have known that the individual in question was a student? A smart thief would pretend to be a student in order to blend in and avoid attention. He or she might have ducked into a lecture immediately after the theft in order to evade capture. I don’t know that I would have pointed out an unusual individual sitting in the classroom with a backpack on. I don’t know that I could have if I wanted to.

So, the officer could not have known whether or not he was a student. She could have radioed dispatch to request that an administrator remove the student from class for questioning, but that presupposes that he was a student. If he had indeed been a thief, it is possible he could have been armed or dangerous, and RUPD is here for just such occurrences. I would not want to put an untrained individual in close proximity to someone like that if we could avoid it.

She could have, after removing the suspect from class, taken him back to the Police Department across campus for questioning, handcuffed and in the back of an RUPD squad car. They could have searched him and found that he was not carrying the stolen goods. Instead, the officer chose the quickest, most expedient route. The eyewitness was brought forward and was able to tell the officers that the student was not the suspect in question. The student was released in under five minutes to return to class.

So in the end, the worst outcome from this whole situation was that our classmate was humiliated in front of his friends and his professor. For that, I am deeply sorry. I would like to apologize to Mr. Callahan for his misfortune. It is sad that theft has increased wildly on campus, and I’m sorry that the suspect’s description was so broad that it included him. Additionally, it’s possible that the officer could have been more polite in singling out Mr. Callahan instead of gesturing towards the students. I am not sorry, however, that Rice’s finest did the job to the best of their abilities. They acted in the best interests of the community, and with due deference to the suspect involved.