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September 22, 2006 > Opinion > O-Week hazing rules pierce hole in Houston economy

O-Week hazing rules pierce hole in Houston economy

By Julia Bursten | Thresher Editorial Staff

Once upon a time, I was a freshman, a stranger to Houston enduring the trials of Orientation Week. Six other members of Lovett College’s class of 2008 and I gathered as we nervously awaited our advisers’ arrival with our scavenger hunt lists. We had no idea what to expect, and what we met were a series of fast-food-centric purchasing

demands, stunts involving gallons of milk or phallic produce and tests of our abilities to quickly create Web sites.

It was not until the wee hours of Thursday morning, after one Lovett freshman had been ordained as a minister and President David Leebron had quoted The Princess Bride, that I first heard of scavenger hunt challenges of yore. It started with a story about a co-adviser getting “Baker, Hell Yeah!” tattooed on her posterior a few years back, and my fellow new students and I inquired why tattooing and piercing had disappeared from our own scavenger hunt lists. It boiled down to O-Week decision makers worrying that students might feel hazed by being offered the opportunity to permanently alter their bodies during their first week of college.

I accepted this response and thought little more of it until two weeks ago, when my suitemates and I wound up at a piercing parlor. I decided to get a new piece of silver in my right ear and was shooting the breeze with the piercer, Zac.

He inquired where I was in school, and when I replied “Rice” his face clouded over. He hesitantly asked, “Y’all don’t have O-Week anymore, do you?”

I replied that we did and asked him how he knew about Rice’s new student orientation procedure. The story he told in response was heartrending: He used to celebrate the last week of August like airlines celebrate Thanksgiving, with throngs of nervous new students and giggling advisers padding his waiting room. He would watch members of different colleges bond over the experience of getting pierced or inked. He even knew a few of the college cheers. Plus, he made upwards of $500 per night for every day there was a scavenger hunt. Clearly, this man had loved O-Weeks past.

I was thrown off guard. Here was a guy about to ram a 10-inch needle into my head looking like a forlorn puppy as he described the effects of my fellow students’ neglect had had on him. Without the scavenger-hunt income, Zac could not take summer vacations, and he’d had to rearrange his August schedule significantly once Rice students stopped showing up en masse on select Indian summer weeknights. His impression was that my peers and I had voluntarily boycotted his establishment for the past half-decade’s worth of O-Weeks.

Not so, my perforated friend. While the administration has been taking careful steps to ensure students comply with section 51.936 of the Texas Education Code — the regulations on and definitions of hazing — it has completely neglected the effect such measures have on the community outside the hedges.

There’s a case to be made that the new English Composition Exam “adversely affects the mental health or dignity” of some new students. But I have a hard time understanding some of this year’s scavenger hunt guidelines. They begin with general anti-hazing principles, move on to examples of “typical hazing practices” such as “being forced to wear embarrassing or humiliating attire in public,” “binge drinking” and “sexual simulation,” and end with a set of more Rice-specific rules such as “O-Week is dry and therefore alcohol is not allowed,” “No strippers or homeless individuals,” “No stealing” and “No tattoos, piercing or disfiguring in any form.”

No alcohol I understand. No homeless individuals I am downright thankful for. But I do not get why piercing is on par with a criminal offense in the administration’s eyes. At the basest level, one act benefits the Houston economy while the other damages it.

Shame on you, administrators. While I cannot ask you simply to hang up your hats and go off and do something other than university governance work, I can ask you to reconsider the scavenger hunt guidelines in a broader frame of reference. Keep the rules against feces, handcuffs and prostitutes, but think twice about denying us the ability to put holes in our ears. Think about Zac.

Julia Bursten is a Lovett College junior and senior editor.

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