Smart Warfare

Wet meets wild at Rice's epic water balloon fight: It's Harry Potter with soakers & chuggers

It's all about the splash.

You know it's a special day when being awoken at 6 a.m. to the blaring sounds of bagpipes doesn't even bother you. The bagpipes are just a recording, at least, and the early wake up is a prank, retribution for the time we locked up a room controlling 3-foot speakers and blared "MMMBop" on repeat.

It's all part of Beer Bike, the Saturday that Rice University students put aside everything else (studying, relationships, sanity) in a tri-level ode to their own glorious weirdness. The official beer bike festivities are a race between the 11 residential colleges (think Harry Potter) as they field teams of chuggers and bikers who take turns completing their individual tasks (chugging a beer or biking a lap).

But in addition to the pranks and an early morning filled with boozing, dancing and general collegiate awesomeness, since the early 1990s the highlight of the day is the parade. That's when each college loads up two trucks along Rice's inner loop and hordes of students hurl tens of thousands of water balloons in what's unofficially thought of as the world's largest water balloon fight.

For a week preceding, guys and girls sit outside and fill the fist-sized balloons with water using German precision. Each college fills up to a dozen giant plastic garbage bins with the bouncy projectiles, totaling between 10,000 and 20,000 balloons. (If these estimates are correct, the average beer bike parade tosses about 165,000 balloons, more than the 150,000 balloon fight recognized by Guinness as the world's largest.)

The half-hour parade crawls along at a snail's pace as students engage in epic warfare. Most start out throwing indiscriminately at anyone in a different colored shirt, but after a while the brave load themselves up with balloons cradled in their wet shirts and weave through the different colleges, searching out friends to soak.

Whether drunk of sober (and with the lax alcohol policy under review, bet on more of the latter in the future), more students participate in the water balloon fight/parade than any other part of the day.

It's ridiculous. It's messy. But it's also an amazing life experience that you can't find anywhere else. It's hard not to love.

Rice's water balloon fights are anything but small scale.

Photo by Barbara Morris

Rice's water balloon fights are anything but small scale.

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Thanks, Queen Bey

Pop icon Beyoncé donates $100,000 to University of Houston Law School

Photo by Erza Shaw Getty Images

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Pop megastar Beyoncé Knowles-Carter has donated $100,000 to the University of Houston Law Center Criminal Justice Clinic through her BeyGOOD Foundation. The gift will allow the clinic to hire fill-time faculty to head it, benefiting the students who study there.

“I am delighted that the BeyGOOD Foundation has made this very generous gift to the UH Law Center,” said Leonard Baynes, dean of the UH Law Center. “Not only will this funding help establish a full-time criminal justice clinic that provides pro bono legal services in our community, but it will also supercharge our already excellent criminal law and justice programming.”

The clinic is one of nine at UHLC. It helps students learn to navigate the criminal justice system, especially on behalf of clients that are underserved by skilled attorneys. People of color are affected disproportionately by a lack of good, ethical representation.

Beyoncé, the most decorated artist in Grammy history and easily the biggest musical star native to Houston, has a long history of advocating for criminal justice reform. She was a staunch supporter of the police reform following the deaths of Alton Sterling and Philando Castile, asking law enforcement to “stop killing us” in a web post. In 2020, she penned an open letter to the Kentucky attorney general asking for justice in the death of Breonna Taylor.

Through her BeyGOOD Foundation, established in 2013, Beyoncé has focused mostly on expanding the prospects of Black-owned business and offering education opportunities to students. Forwarding the cause of legal representation in Texas while also helping out marginalized communities compliments her other philanthropic work.

“At UH Law, we envision a legal profession where ‘everyone has the opportunity to prosper,’ as BeyGOOD envisions, and we will achieve this vision by providing access to strong and effective legal representation in criminal proceedings,” Baynes said. “And together, through this gift, the BeyGOOD Foundation and UHLC will shepherd the next generation of criminal justice attorneys in the city of Houston, the state of Texas and the nation.”