VOLUME 103, ISSUE NO. 10 | STUDENT-RUN SINCE 1916 | RICETHRESHER.ORG | WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 7, 2018
the Rice thresher
Arina Midterms
Rice students turn out to vote in record numb
Students line up early Tuesday morning in the Rice Memorial Center to cast their votes in the 2018 midterm elections. Students reported waiting as long as two hours to vote, and there was a steady line
from 7 a. m., when the polls opened, to 7 p.m., when they closed. A total of 753 people voted in the RMC on Tuesday, surpassing the 688 who voted in the 2016 election. christinatan / thresher
- VOTER TURNOUT —
Number of votes cast by Rice students
336 1,027 1,298
in 2014 in 2016 in 2018
*This number may include some non -students who are registered on Rice’s campus. _
Esperanza theme changed
Prisoner remains to be relocated
ANNATA
NEWS EDITOR
Rice Program Council changed
Esperanza’s theme to “A Taste of the
Twenties” a week before the event after
student leaders expressed concerns about a
Great Gatsby-themed dance at the Houston
Museum of African American Culture.
Representatives from RPC, which
organizes the dance, as well as the presidents
of the National Society of Black Engineers,
the Black Student Association and the Rice
African Student Association met on Sunday
to discuss how to alter the theme, according
to Dessy Akinfenwa, president of the NSBE.
Akinfenwa said the meeting was productive.
“People don’t often intend to be
offensive, but sometimes when you aren’t
intentional [with your actions] it can come
off offensive,” Akinfenwa said. “I had never
read [The Great Gatsby] and someone was
like, yeah, that book is actually kind of
racist ... I started hearing it around the black
campus too, a lot of people making separate
connections. I wasn’t surprised. It’s kind of
the world we live in.”
RPC issued a public apology viaFacebook.
Maishara Muquith, the RPC president,
said RPC had discussed the appropriateness
of two theme options with the Office of
Multicultural Affairs, “Under the Sea” and “A
Night at Gatsby’s” given the location.
“We knew we were not experts on African
American experiences or backgrounds,”
Muquith said. “We realize now that we
should have also consulted other resources,
including student organizations, to gain a
broader perspective.”
Akinfenwa said students should have
been consulted in addition to the OMA.
“It’s good that they brought it up with
the OMA, but the time period they grew up
in versus the time we’re living in right now,
I think it’s pretty different,” Akinfenwa said.
According to the RPC Facebook
announcement, RPC plans to incorporate
African American culture in the 1920s.
“After the meeting with [the] presidents,
the conversation wasn’t about whether we
should change the theme - it was pretty
clear that we need to do so in order to be
more inclusive, but about how to change
the theme given our time constraint,”
Muquith said.
Muquith said RPC has discussed how to
make Esperanza and RPC more inclusive,
including potential ways to advertise to and
recruit minority members to RPC.
Akinfenwa said while the problem arose
because of the combination of the venue and
theme, she appreciated the choice of venue.
“They shouldn’t be afraid to use venues
like this in the future,” Akinfenwa said.
“Don’t be afraid to go somewhere that puts
people out of their comfort zone, because I
think that’s how we’re supposed to learn at
this university.”
ALICE LIU
THRESHER STAFF
An exhibit depicting the history of
convict leasing in Sugar Land quietly went
on display in Fondren Library’s central
walkway earlier this semester. Originally
created for a Houston Action Research Team
project several years ago, it was updated and
reinstalled in light of a recent discovery.
In February, the remains of 95 African-
American victims of the convict-leasing
system, described by journalist Douglas
Blackmon as “slavery by another name,”
were unearthed on a Fort Bend Independent
School District construction site, according
to court records. The discovery generated
both local and national attention, from
coverage by the Houston Chronicle and
Texas Monthly to features in the New York
Times and Washington Post.
“The blood-drenched history that gave
the city of Sugar Land, Tex., its name show[s]
its face,” wrote Brent Staples in an opinion
piece for the New York Times.
A BLOODY PAST
For half a century after the abolition
of slavery, Southern state prisons rented
out convicts to private companies as a
replacement source of cheap labor. Under a
series of laws known as the “Black Codes,”
black men were targeted and incarcerated
for petty charges such as vagrancy, then
forced to labor under debilitating conditions
considered far too dangerous for white
workers. Often contracts between the prison
and the company explicitly stipulated that
the convicts be African-American.
Sugar Land grew from the Imperial Sugar
Company, once the biggest establishment
using convict leasing in Texas. For the
most part, the rapidly developing city has
attempted to write out the forced black labor
that formed its economic foundation from its
history, Jay Jenkins, a lawyer for the Texas
Criminal Justice Coalition, said.
On Oct. 23, the city council voted 6-0
to approve the request of Fort Bend ISD,
which owns the land, to relocate the
bodies to the nearby Imperial Prison Farm
Cemetery and continue construction for
the James Reese Career and Technical
Center over the burial site.
The decision went against the
recommendation of the city-appointed
Cemetery Task Force, composed of
community members, professors and
activists, which voted 19-1 to rebury the
exhumed bodies where they were found out
of respect for the original burial ground as a
sacred space.
The rush to move the remains elsewhere
disrespects the memory, history and
contributions of the individuals, Jenkins, a
member of the task force, said.
Buried in unmarked pine boxes, the
bodies reveal a life of suffering. Forensic
examinations show muscles torn away from
the bone from the strain of heavy labor; many
of the inmates were likely worked to death,
according to archaeologists who worked on
the remains.
Both the plantation owner’s initial
treatment of the convicts and the city
council’s decision reflect an implicit
understanding of black bodies as disposable,
Summar McGee, president of Rice’s Black
Student Association, said.
"They’ve been laid to rest. Had that been
a cemetery of other people, would they have
moved the bodies?” McGee, a Hanszen
College junior, said. “The real uncomfortable
truth is that they — and when I say ‘they’, I
hear and I feel ‘I’— are not of value to people.”
CITY IN DENIAL
Robert Scamardo, a member of Fort Bend
ISD’s general council, cited a lack of legal
see BURIAL page 3
