Admissions wrongly ashamed of lone star status

I was born in Texas, raised in Texas, attend college in Texas and soon will begin my career in Texas. I’m not ashamed to admit my Texan roots. So why is Rice ashamed?

Two videos are posted on Rice’s Web site for prospective students, http://www.futureowls.rice.edu. One is a city and campus montage. In the other, a series of students sit in front of a glowing white background and talk about why Rice is a great place. What’s striking is that the latter video spends most of its eight-minute running time trying to assure viewers that, despite everything they’ve heard, Texas is really not that bad. Texas has culture, non-cowboy-boot-wearing citizens and even grass — not a tumbleweed in sight. In other words, the video’s producers felt Rice could not stand on its own merits — its location had to be explained away.

This prominently placed message to the outside world does not say Rice is a great school, but rather that Rice is a great school despite being in Texas. This reeks of low confidence.

Of course numerous Texas stereotypes still exist today. I have no doubt that Northeasterners think of Texas as an uncultured tangle of oil, ten-gallon hats and cattle. I am sure Rice students returning to their home state of New York are bombarded by the kinds of questions usually reserved for returning from a foreign country.

But this does not mean Rice should be so defensive when recruiting prospective students. Harvard University’s promotional video does not open with students expressing their surprise that not all Bostonians are Red-Sox-hat-wearing, clam-chowder-eating, post-Patriots-game-rioting Yankees. Harvard possesses the self-confidence to define itself on its own terms.

Rice should be the last place to succumb to the elitist worldview that the cultural and intellectual life of the United States begins and ends on the Eastern seaboard. But that is exactly what the Admission Office’s approach assumes.

Just as Rice should not wish it were on the East Coast, it should also not wish it were in the Ivy League. Rice has long called itself the ‘Ivy of the South’ (or, more specifically, the ‘Harvard of the South’) out of a strange mixture of pride and jealousy. While this might have been an appropriate motto when Rice was transforming itself from a small science and engineering institute into a top-tier university, now it is the motto of a school wanting to be something it is not. It no longer fits.

We should not rush to be an Ivy-League clone, because Ivy-worship, if carried too far, will destroy our unique identity.

Rice is different, and we should be proud of that. Our small class sizes, great professors and low tuition set us apart. And — however hard the Admission Office may try to wish it away — being in Texas sets us apart, too.

Sure, Texas is far from perfect. I am sad to see the direction in which the virulent strain of religious-right conservatism is taking the state. Rice is not perfect either, and it should keep working to improve itself — but on its own terms, not the Ivy League’s.

My out-of-state friends snicker at the pride Texas takes in its sheer Texasness. But Rice could stand to learn something from the Lone Star State: how to stand tall and stand proud. Now, pardon me while I go shine my cowboy boots.

James Sulak is a Hanszen College senior and former opinion editor.

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