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My name is Rick Lopez and I graduated from Rice in 1996 from Jones College. I had the privilege of being president of Jones College uh during the 1995 1996 year. And it was a wonderful time. I learned a lot about who I was as a person

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and also how to interact with so many different kinds of people and make decisions that affected others. That was a really, really important part of my life and helped me get where I am today. But the story I'm gonna tell has to do with a tradition

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that we had back at Jones at that time where we would celebrate the changing over from one president to another. And at my particular changeover where I was finally getting ready to graduate, I gave up the presidency to the next generation and ended up in a

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situation where of course, we'd had a bit much to drink over at Willy's Pub and decided that we really, really needed to go down to the Taco Cabana on Kirby, which was a hangout for many of us to go and get food. And as it turned

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out, we knew that we had all had too much to drink and being the responsible rice students that we were, we decided that we were not in fact going to take a car. And instead we took one of the maintenance carts from the building. And we

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ended up driving down uh through West University in a golf cart myself and two of my friends, Nathan Walcott and Steve Quantz. And during that particular eventful drive, we ended up in a situation where one of them fell off the cart and ended up cracking his

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head open on the driveway of a West University residents home, of course, unbeknownst to us at the time, there was actually campus police officers who were always very helpful uh following us and immediately turned on the lights and gave us help. And that led to all

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sorts of mess, which culminated in our friend Steve having to go to the emergency room in the Medical Center for stitches and all of that. Uh we ended up getting back to campus because we were made to push the cart back to campus and ended up

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having to go and get Steve back out of the emergency room. The funny thing about that and the awful part of it besides the obvious was that we really had to be there for one another through all the thick and thin that happened at Rice. And

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what we really, really learned through that kind of experience was that even when we were out there getting in trouble, there was always that tight sense of community at Rice and looking out for one another and making sure that even in a stupid situation like that,

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we all still went back and took care of one another, just like we had to go and take care of Steve while he was at the emergency room. So that is probably the most important part of the experience is that when you're here at Rice, you

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really do make friendships and connections that will last a lifetime. So hopefully, uh as you are coming to Rice and starting your adventure here, you will get into and have that kind of story and have something that even in the face of adversity, you realize that

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the connections you make here are among the most important you'll ever have in your life. Thank you very much.