| Tom Littman Concert Manager 2237 Alice Pratt Brown Hall 713-348-4933 littman@rice.edu Kristi Blair Concert Office Assistant 2243 Alice Pratt Brown Hall 713-348-8000 klb2@rice.edu |
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| Unless otherwise noted, admission to all events is free and tickets are not required. Programs are subject to change without notice. For information, call the Shepherd School Concert Office at 713-348-8000. |
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| RICE CAMPUS ESCAPES RITA UNSCATHED Office of News and Media Relations Arie Wilson Rice News Staff Writer With planning, execution, communication and luck, Rice University escaped the threat of Hurricane Rita with no harm to people and virtually no damage from the storm. More than 2,000 undergraduate and graduate students, faculty and staff took shelter on the Rice campus during the storm, which came ashore near the Texas-Louisiana border as a Category 3 hurricane. President David Leebron expressed thanks to the Rice community for making the experience as comfortable as possible. “I am deeply grateful to everyone who helped prepare this campus to assure the safety of our students, faculty and staff,” President Leebron said. “There are many who deserve a great deal of praise, but worthy of special mention are the housing and dining staff, the facilities and engineering staff, the college masters, student EMS workers, the Rice University police and the IT staff. Once more we experienced what an extraordinary community we have here at Rice.” As the hurricane approached Friday, undergraduate students who had not chosen to evacuate from Houston reported to their respective colleges, and volunteer housing, dining and custodial staff members stayed on to ensure students’ comfort. Robert and Janice McNair Hall was opened at 8 a.m. Sept. 23 for residents of the Graduate Student Apartments and graduate and postdoctoral students and their families who live off campus. With Senior Project Manager Pat Dwyer stepping in to coordinate, they were assigned shelter in McNair Hall, Rice Memorial Center or Fondren Library. “This was a little bit of an unusual situation since it was our first time to shelter graduate students on campus,” said Barbara White Bryson, associate vice president of Facilities, Engineering and Planning (FE&P), who added that the professionalism of the Rice staff was a key factor in the success of this operation.
“So many people came through so terrifically — Russell Price and his amazing team of facilities people, Mark Ditman and the housing and dining staff, RUPD, the college masters and many others. I am very proud of our staff and all the others on campus.” “We did it partially because we live in houses that are full of windows and partially to have someone on campus to manage our expensive instruments if the windows had blown out,” Yekovich said. “My wife and I had sleeping bags and we took double bass cases, which are padded, and slept on them,” Yekovich said. “It was surprisingly comfortable. I had never slept on a bass case before.” |
