Only at Rice
A bare ass and a broken window: Rice student is asked to pay up for revealingthe naked truth
The culpritPhoto via SaveDuncan'sButt.com
The windowPhoto via SaveDuncan'sButt.com
The windowPhoto via SaveDuncan'sButt.com
Photo by Jennifer Ding/The Rice Thrasher
Duncan Eddy is a junior at Rice University majoring in mechanical engineering. And like many serious, scholarly Rice students, Eddy spent Halloween running around the campus in nothing but a little shaving cream.
Unlike most students, his exhibitionism ended in a trip to the hospital and a $15,000 bill from the university.
Eddy was participating in Baker 13, which organizes students to run around campus naked twice a month, often leaving trails of butt- and boob-prints in shaving cream on any windows along the route. It was while attempting to jump up to leave an assprint on the elevated windows of Rice's Fondren Library that Eddy's butt crashed through the glass.
When people say Rice students are stubborn asses, I'm pretty sure this is what they're referring to.
His injuries were relatively minor, but it's not exactly the first time a student has damaged school property while running around naked. In 2008 another student broke a library window with his butt, and others have knocked down the large, wooden library doors and windows at residential colleges. When people say Rice students are stubborn asses, I'm pretty sure this is what they're referring to.
Rice is replacing the oversize plate glass library window with tempered glass and charging Eddy for the full cost — $15,000. To raise the money Eddy started Save Duncan's Butt to solicit donations and, in the grand tradition of Rice fundraising, sell t-shirts.
"Now, as a student able to experience the amazing education and opportunities Rice offers only by the grace of its incredible financial aid program, I do not have $15,000. Quite simply, if I cannot raise the money, I will not be able to remain at Rice," Eddy writes.
So far the webpage has raised about half the necesary total, but many are also questioning the unprecented cost. Three years ago, the student who broke a library window was fined $3,000 for a replacement. As a friend of his wrote in a Rice Thresher editorial,
I'm no doctor, but a 500 percent increase in the cost of a window over three years is completely unprecedented. Before you throw all of your money into the apparently lucrative window markets, let me walk you through a few reasons to hold off. Apple Inc., for example, had a closing stock price of $107.59 on Oct. 27, 2008. Three years later on Oct. 31, 2011 it closed at $400.24 — an absolutely stunning 372 percent increase. So, Rice University means to tell me that during this same time period the cost of a single window outperformed the strongest company on the market by over 125 percent? This, friends, seems unlikely. Aside from just deciding on an arbitrary number, I have absolutely no clue how this $15,000 figure could have possibly been reached."
Eddy declined to be interviewed but says he is grateful for the support that he's received.
Do you think the $15,000 tab is fair, or should Rice be responsible for the upgrade? Or should there be some sort of naked injury immunity?
Sante's Garden Room is decorated with two olive trees.
Photo by Chris Furia