RWB

There was a very good editorial about the Rice-BCM merger in the Chronicleyesterday. It completely avoided such fuzzy pollyanna words as "synergy" and "prestige" and looked instead at BCM's finances. The editorial then examined all of BCM's sources of income and discussed the level of risk or volatility associated with each. But Rice is pretty rich, right? So Rice should be able to fill in for any BCM shortfall. Not so fast. They conclude with a statement that perfectly echoes my own fears. I am not a faculty member nor a staff member of Rice University--just a concerned alumnus. I am very happy to see someone actually looking at the numbers for a change instead of speaking in abstractions. Mergers in the business world often destroy shareholder value--but they certainly build up the egos of CEO and attract lots of adoring press reports. I think Rice+BCM is starting to look like AOL+TimeWarner.

I think the objection to your post was that it was entirely ad hominem, and that it did not address either the primary concern brought up by the Faculty Review Merger Committee (the imbalance in the size and operating costs of the two institutions) or the well-documented financial concern of Dr. Vardi (that Rice, which is already carrying a debt load and a reduced endowment, would be taking on a huge debt load by buying Baylor--so much so that the school would be imperiled). Vardi offered up plentiful documentary evidence, which you have ignored. The administration has been working in secret on this for more than a year with nothing to show for it--all while BCM has been sinking closer and closer to insolvency. Is it really so shocking that the faculty and alumni (whose money Rice has been begging for with unusual ferocity for the past year) are starting to ask questions? I don't want Rice to become the next Upsala College or Barrington College. This is perhaps the biggest decision for Rice in its history, and the silence has been deafening.

There is one new development in the Rice-BCM merger--an interim report by the Faculty Merger Review Committee. It's interim because the negotiations have been so secret, that the faculty committee is still in the dark on some things and not permitted to report on others. Thier main concern is the imbalance--BCM is much larger than Rice, and has much larger operating costs. (More details here.) One faculty member, Moshe Vardi, gave a public lecture on the merger that was very much against it. He based his conclusion on publicly available information, including some very damning financial numbers from Baylor (and not so great financials from Rice--who knew Rice was carrying debt? Not me, and I am an alum.) You can read about his lecture here. Some will automatically dismiss faculty concerns as whining, but the facts about Baylor's serious financial problems are true and would be inherited by Rice if the merger occurred, and frankly, the administrations of the two schools have been talking in secret for over a year now, and this lack of transparency is very worrying. And anyone who has driven around Rice in the last few years knows that President Leebron is an empire builder, but in this financial climate, perhaps what we need is a consolidator, someone who can hunker down and get Rice back on a solid footing. In any case, as an alumnus, I am disturbed at the vast silence from the administration on this matter. All I ever hear from them are endless requests for more money.

I don't recall that, but I do recall that when they completed the section that ran from I-10 to 59, they opened it up a day early to bicyclists. My friiends and I all took a ride on it (quite taxing, due to a stiff, unimpeded wind that day) and then settled down for a mid-parkway concert by Joe "King" Carrasco. It was awesome.

I'm a Rice alumnus, and I like it.

I wentr to Memorial back in the Ice Age. I didn't graduate in the top 10%, but nonetheless got into Rice. At the time UT didn't have a top 10% rule, so I'm certain I could have gotten in there easily at that time, if I had so chosen. Memorial in my antidiluvian day was quite snobbish and strongly aware of its standing in the class structure. Perhaps that has changed in the years since a greater number of "north of the fvreeway" students now attend. It's harder to look down on people when you sit beside them in class.

I agree. Jails are going to have to be somewhere, and that somewhere might be an undesirable or remote area when they are built, but 10-20-30 years from then, that somewhere might be very valuable and desirable real estate. They have made the jails look pretty great--so great that I'm sure people regularly assume they are part of U.H. Downtown when they first see them. In fact, they are a model for what governments should do with public property in terms of esthetics. It is reasonable to ask whether they have boxed themselves into a corner--can they really afford to expand downtown if they need to? Possibly not. But at the same time, moving the jails (and the courts) would be prohibitively expensive.

There are already several parks near and adjacent to the jails now. So all that is being proposed is something to conect the existing parks. You are probably right about the homeless--they have already colonized James Bute Park (which is one of the Bayou-adjacent parks downtown). I think you are wromg about crime. There might be lots of criminals getting out of jail there, but there are also huge numbers of cops there too. Cops are usually a pretty good deterrent. crimehouston.com bears this out. The map below shows all the murders and rapes in the neighborhood from January 28, 2005 to January 31, 2008. Murders would be represented by a red dot, if there were any. There have been 8 rapes, which is 8 too many. But compared with other parts of Houston, it's not an outrageous number for a three year period. Indeed, if you scroll in almost any direction from this map (except directly west), the numbers of rapes and murders gets worse. The jails are along Baker and Allen, by the way.

I think we are talking about different facilities. The one I am thinking of is definitely a county jail, and it is just north of Buffalo Bayou on San Jacinto. You can read about it and see a photo here: http://www.hcso.hctx.net/detention/701.asp

Aren't they already in a warehouse district? Indeed, one of them is a converted cold-storage warehouse. In any cases, the jails need to be near the courts, so any talk of moving the jails would mean moving the entire county criminal justice apparatus. I can think of better uses for my tax dollars. (I guess it would make sense if the cost of the downtown land sold was actually less than the cost of buying land and building courts/jails elsewhere in the county.)

Would this have made the inmate processing center on the south side of the bayou redundant? And if so, do you know if they would have taken away the concrete inmate pedestrian bridge currently connecting the inmate processing center to the jail? (Of course, they would probably still need to use it to ferry prisoners back and forth between court and jail.)

As far as I can tell, the windows of the jail at 701 N. San Jac are completely blacked out! (http://www.hcso.hctx.net/detention/701.asp) So no great views from there. And I don't think the 1301 Baker jail has windows at all. But the other one might. Harris County made an effort to make 701 and 1201 Baker look nice, it has to be said.

The courthouse (and the inmate processing center) are right across the Bayou from the jails, so it is kind of convenient to have jails there. On the other hand, for persons serving longer sentences (who have already had their day in court), I agree-why not build a jail on cheap land in some relatively undeveloped part of Harris County.