Freshman discovers that when it comes to opportunities at Rice, The Skye’s the Limit

Schell has been able to attend a number of speeches given
by distinguished leaders at the James A. Baker III Institute
for Public Policy and report on them for the Rice Thresher,
sometimes even getting personal interviews with the speakers.
He credits these experiences almost entirely to “the
unique opportunities available at Rice,” citing the
importance of the Baker Institute and the generosity of
the Thresher editors.

Schell interviewed Carlos Salinas de Gortari after the former
Mexican president spoke at the Baker Institute in March.
Salinas met with the news media for a question-and-answer
session, and he talked to reporters from the local Spanish
TV news stations in Spanish.

“I was right on the line of being able to understand
what he was saying, so I was happy I could follow the conversation,”
said Schell. Following the Q-and-A, Schell had the opportunity
to walk alongside Salinas and speak with him one-on-one
about being a student at Rice. “I felt I should say
it in Spanish, and it was incredible being able to do that,”
Schell said.

The Baker College resident said Salinas’ speech presented
a viewpoint on the economic achievements of his administration
that was the opposite of what Schell had read for his Latin
American Politics course at Rice. In the book “Bordering
on Chaos,” author Andres Oppenheimer blames Salinas’
privatization of the economy for helping the rich get richer
and the poor get poorer; Salinas cited statistics from the
United Nations to support his claim that privatization improved
equality because the number of people living under the poverty
line decreased. “It’s interesting to see if the
capitalist standpoint really does work,” Schell said.

Salinas was not Schell’s first close encounter with
a diplomat of global fame. His assignments for the Thresher
have resulted in interviews with Latvian President Vaira
Vike-Freiberga and several former secretaries of the treasury,
including James A. Baker III, honorary chair of the Baker
Institute.

He had time to discuss the educational system in Latvia
in detail with Vike-Freiberga and was intrigued by her explanation
of the impact democracy has had. “During the Soviet
occupation of Latvia, college was free for everyone, but
‘everyone’ meant anyone who had no history of
dissent in their family,” Schell said. “So if
your uncle had protested the occupation years ago, you had
no possibility of higher education.” Schell said Vike-Freiberga
told him that after the Soviet Union fell and Latvia became
a democracy, state-funded education was maintained as much
as possible, and the current system now pays for education
to the top students at all colleges.

Covering the Baker Institute’s forum on the role of
the secretary of the treasury, which featured eight men
who have served in that role, has been Schell’s toughest
task. “Because I don’t have a strong background
in economics, and given the enormous economic knowledge
of the panelists, it was hard to come up with a question
and understand their answer,” he said. But the assignment
wasn’t as difficult as Schell had anticipated, because
the former secretaries, especially Baker and Nicholas Brady,
“answered very clearly.”

To prepare for interviews with such high-ranking officials,
Schell spends some of his free time “catching up on
current events or looking up the history of events that
are now current.” He subscribes to the Christian Science
Monitor — “it has a much better worldview than
other papers” — and reads the online version of
papers that have a liberal bias as well as those that are
clearly conservative. “I like to see the different
perspectives about everything that’s going on,”
he said.

Free time has become a rare commodity for Schell. In addition
to taking classes, writing for the Thresher and serving
as its online editor, he tutors once a week at Pilgrim Elementary
School, where most of the kids speak Spanish; plays the
timpani for the Campanile Orchestra; takes marimba lessons;
plays intramural soccer; and serves as treasurer for Baker
College and as director of technology for the Student Association.
He hasn’t chosen a major yet, but he’s leaning
toward policy studies and Spanish.

Schell credits the Baker Institute for attracting domestic
and foreign leaders to the campus, and he realizes how lucky
he has been to get to meet the likes of Salinas, Vike-Freiberga
and other distinguished speakers whose names are known around
the world.