About Will Rice College
About Will Rice College
If you take a little wander through South Campus—the most historic portion of Rice University's campus—you'll come across a college that shines like the pyre of a thousand phoenixes illuminated by myth, power, and value. Congratulations, you have discovered the rust and gold glory that is Will Rice College, the "College of Gods and Goddesses" and the second college founded at Rice University. You may first notice that we have a dazzling quad, a quad flanked on three sides by a spectacular newer dorm of mighty concrete, a stunning historic old dorm of indestructibly epic architecture, and a cozy commons of much communal merriment. It's hard to not be impressed by our college's stature, even before you begin to interact with the Gods and Goddesses who call Will Rice their home.
We Will Ricers have a common goal in mind—winning. Winning is our religion and Beer Bike is our Christmas—we are the only college to have ever swept Beer Bike (meaning that we've placed first in all three races), not once, but FOUR times. Even when we don't win, we take pride in putting our best effort forward and striving to be the best versions of ourselves. We also win at intramural sports on almost a weekly basis. As you see, we have a reputation of, well, dominating, which explains why everyone tends to hate on us as a college. But honestly, you can't blame us for being proud. At our core, we are a friendly family of a residential college that comes together through sharing our daily academic enlightenment, intramural sports, parties, weekly quad celebrations, festive meetings, and of course, by simply hanging out in the commons, enjoying each other's company, eating the delicious bounty of East Servery, and talking about our latest plans to manifest our passions.
We're damn proud of our tradition of excellence. Welcome to Will Rice.
William M. Rice Jr.
In the beginning (the year 1900), William Marsh Rice (Willy) meant to establish Rice University in his namesake following his death. Then, Willy was poisoned by Albert Patrick, his evil conspiring butler who planned to steal Willy's multimillion-dollar fortune, procured, of course, from being a successful industrial revolution businessman. The evil Albert Patrick even forged a fake will that deeded Willy's fortune to Albert Patrick as the beneficiary. Oh no!
But, with the expert help of James A. Baker (Willy's buddy-bro from work) and William M. Rice Jr. (Willy's nephew, Will Rice!) the true will (lots of wills!) was resurfaced and carried out, and Mister Patrick was sentenced to death. After many years, the money that Albert Patrick tried to steal went toward its original purpose: to establish the best university in the country, Rice University, in the year 1912.
Seriously. You can't make this stuff up. It's straight out of a Western. And if you've ever been on a tour of Rice University, you know this story.
Anyway, in the late 50s, Rice University decided that the residential college system would be an amazing idea to implement on its grounds. So, James A. Baker donated a boatload of money to establish Baker College (a really crappy college that took up some of the buildings on campus). No one really cared about that.
It was the year 1957, and by this time, Will Rice was already super wealthy because he had been involved in the lumber business as well as being a founder of the Union Bank and Trust Company, president of the merchants and Planters Oil Company, and director of the Guardian Trust and Company. Basically, he was smart, sophisticated, snazzy, accomplished, and a wealthy-as-hell baller. And what do wealthy people do with their tons of monies? They become philanthropists.
And what better way to spend his money than to establish a residential college of his very own, at the very educational institution that Will Rice's uncle established, especially when Will Rice even served on the Rice University Board of Trustees?
Then Will Rice he said "Let there be Will Rice College!" and he wrote a check for some tens of thousands of dollars—because back then, that's all you really needed to establish any given institution.
And then lesser colleges were established by lesser benefactors. No need to go into detail.