Rice is organized about the College System similar to Oxford

Rice is organized about the College System similar to Oxford and Cambridge in the UK. There are no fraternities (other than the honor fraternities) at Rice and everyone is assigned to a college. Each college has an on campus dorm and dining facility. Par and I were assigned to Wiess (the pronunciation is not German, but rhymes with Rice.)

I was doing a little organizing of the ‘stuff’ in my desk and I stumbled across my copy of The Student Handbook of Rice University. This is relatively unique for me since I am close to zero on the ‘packrat’ scale.

I left Beaumont for the big city of Houston in 1964 to matriculate (25 cent word) at Rice University. The freshman class of 1968 showed up a week early for Freshman Week and along with our beanies and roommates we received our Handbooks.

The class of ’68 was unique in that we were the last class to matriculate (wow - twice in a few sentences) under the ‘original will’. Rice was established based on the will of William Marsh Rice, a businessman who made his fortune in Texas and who was assassinated by his valet in 1900 (another great story here - google it).