Inside the Bakerite Life

I didn’t know much about the Residential College system before getting into Rice, and nothing could’ve prepared me for “Bakerite life.” Baker runs on its own calendar, logic and a specific brand of chaos that never fails to surprise. Here are the traditions that turned me into a Baker Loyalist!

Baker Christmas… in September!

I walked into Baker Commons one morning to a Christmas miracle. String lights decorated the walls, red and green streamers decked the servery, and mistletoe hung from every doorway. It was the middle of September. Baker Christmas is a full week of holiday celebration dropped in the middle of the fall semester. Throughout the week there are holiday crafts, karaoke nights, gingerbread house making competitions, Christmas movie binges, stockings filled with treats, and even an O-Week family picture with Santa! The week closes with a college-wide celebration in the President’s Quad, full of music and dancing. We all even get matching sweaters, despite it being 85 degrees outside. 

THE Camping Trip

Every fall, newly-christened freshman reps take the first-year Baker class on an epic camping trip. We pitch tents, play games, drink hot chocolate, gather around the campfire and stargaze. However, the camping trip isn’t actually the tradition, but what happens the next morning. When we left the campsite for the nearby tree farm, we had one task: find the biggest tree and haul it back. After three hours of sawing, chopping and kicking, we had our shiny, pinecone-filled prize. We heaved the tree back to the farm grounds, loaded it into an 18 wheeler, and drove back to Baker sweaty, disheveled, covered in bug bites, but grinning ear to ear. Getting the tree to stand up straight in Baker Commons was an entirely different conversation, though. That tree is still one of the things I’m most proud of as a new Bakerite. 

Baker Beach

Did you know Rice has its very own shoreline, right in Baker Commons? Just kidding, the closest real beach is about an hour away from Rice. However, in true Baker fashion, Bakerites proposed to forge our very own. Baker Beach is our annual public event, open to all Rice undergrads. It fully transforms the college: music, lights, dancing, the whole shebang! It’s one of my favorite Baker traditions that extends outward and invites the whole campus IN. The energy on BB night is something else entirely. What I love about Baker Beach is that it captures something true about the heart of Baker: we aren’t exclusive. Baker has its own strong culture and identity, but it’s not a closed door. Baker Beach is Baker saying, “Come see what we’re about!”

BakerShake

Every spring, Baker Commons becomes The Globe Theatre. BakerShake has been running since the 1970s and holds the title of the longest-running Shakespeare festival in Houston. It draws actors, directors and crew from every college on campus and pulls in audiences from the broader Houston community. Over its history, BakerShake has had five members of the Royal Shakespeare Company fly in from England to direct a performance. Most recently, Bakershake performed Hamlet in March of 2026. I served as Assistant Producer, Costume Designer, Hair and Makeup Designer, and even starred in the show as Gertrude. There’s something about performing Shakespearean monologues in the same room where you eat breakfast every morning that makes Rice feel like nowhere else. BakerShake is arguably my favorite tradition, and being part of it feels like being let in on something special. 

Baker Comes First

Baker traditions really aren’t about specific activities. They’re what happens to a group of people when they keep showing up for the same things together, year after year, class after class. You become part of a story that started decades before you arrived and will keep going long after you leave.

Baker Comes First!

-Doc, Baker ‘29 (Published on 7/7/26)