Rice Thresher: A student tradition

Rice Thresher
A student tradition

BY MARK PASSWATERS
Special to the Rice News

On the second floor of Ley Student Center is a series of adjoining rooms decorated in a fashion one could politely call eclectic. Couches are nestled up to the walls in one room, with blankets and pillows strewn about. A few desks with computers on top can be found, as well as various off-the-wall quotes from those who have frequented these rooms in the recent past. Add a number of pizza boxes on the desks, and you have the offices of the Rice Thresher, a home away from home for some Rice students.

JEFF FITLOW

Clockwise from left are Thresher staff members Liang Liu, Beko Binder, David Brown and Julia Bursten in the newspaper’s office on the second floor of Ley Student Center.

For the current staff, it is home on Wednesday nights — nights that tend to stretch on well into Thursday morning.

”Wednesday nights are production nights, and those are the scary nights,” said Lovett College junior Julia Bursten, the Thresher’s current editor-in-chief. ”We have those blankets and pillows on the couches for a reason, and they get used. The assistant editors and I are in here, in some cases, until 11 a.m. or noon on Thursday.”

While some people might believe that Thresher writers and editors joined the staff to hone their skills at a university without a journalism program or out of some sense of moral obligation, in many cases the real reason is a lot simpler.

Immediate past editor-in-chief and Brown College senior David Brown said, ”I worked on my student paper in high school and swore I’d never do it again, but I got here and was convinced to go to a recruiting meeting. I started writing news stories and liked it. The editors really sucked me in by letting me report on Dick Cheney’s speech at the Baker Institute [in 2003] and the surrounding protests.”

Bursten said her experience was similar.

”I said I was done with student newspapers after high school,” she said. ”When I got here, I got an e-mail asking me if I wanted to go and cover movies that hadn’t come out yet and get paid for it, and I said, ‘No.’ About a month later, I got the same e-mail, and by this time, the budget was getting a little tight, so I had a change of heart. After that, it was ‘down the rabbit hole,’ and here I am.”

Since its inception in 1916, the Thresher’s best source of information has remained constant: the student body.

Brown said, ”This is a campus where everyone knows each other, so we get a lot of our news tips and story ideas by word of mouth.”

Bursten said that the connection between the student body and the paper is a two-way street.

”We’re the voice of the students,” she said. ”If one of our writers cares about something, it’s worth covering.”

Sometimes the coverage is limited by how many people are available to write during a given week. Bursten said students participate on a volunteer basis, and at times when they are overwhelmed by homework and classes, the editors have to do some writing as well.

In some cases, the paper’s coverage of an issue, or just an issue in general, will cause students or alumni to write letters to the editor. When a letter is received, the Thresher has an established guideline on which ones are printed.

”If someone sends in a letter, we’ll run it,” Brown explained. ”It’s the most democratic way to do things. We’re fortunate Rice is small enough that we can do that.”  

Among the generators of letters is the Backpage, a satirical look at issues on campus assembled by executive editor and Hanszen College junior Evan Mintz.

Bursten said the Backpage is a unique feature to the Thresher that isn’t found in very many college papers with a reputation as good as the Thresher’s.

Mintz will come up with an idea from something he heard at the dinner table or around campus and run with it, she said. Sometimes it gets a little touchy; the editors reject ideas almost weekly, she said.

Occasionally, the Backpage will strike a nerve with members of the Rice community.

Brown said the biggest regret he has is the controversial Backpage run in September in which an over-the-top attempt at satire drew outcry from all corners of campus for using racist stereotypes.

Brown said, ”One of the biggest mistakes you can make as an editor is not putting yourself in the position of the reader. We knew what the Backpage editor’s intentions were, but we failed to consider how readers would see it.”

Though the long hours and occasional frustrations might leave some wondering why they came to work for the Thresher to begin with, many tend to stick around for their entire Rice career — for a number of reasons.

Bursten said, ”There are some of the most interesting and fun people on campus in here each Wednesday night. This is the first place I turn when I need to vent or I need guidance. I think most people understand that what we do is beneficial to Rice; I don’t think people understand that we’re doing this, in part, because we care about Rice. We’re all here at odd hours working to improve Rice any way we can.”