The number of departing seniors who will be graduating with their class...

Khevin Brewer, Dominic DiCaprio, Rodrigo Duluc, Brandt Frazier, Kendal Jefferies, Evan Kravetz, Blair Lewis, Daniel Russell, Jackson Parthasarathy, Ben Schragger and Jackson Tyner.

...and you can also include Andrew Dunlap, who graduated last May, and is now seeking his MBA.

Sure, we have considerably more seniors on this year's roster than in years past, but I don't think we've ever graduated such a high percentage of those seniors with their entering class. That's pretty darn impressive. The only senior not graduating is Zach Esquivel, and from what I understand, he's only has a few credits left before earning his degree.

Congrats to all.

Congrats indeed. That's what it's really supposed to be about. Too often, we forget that.

This doesn't take anything away from them but FWIW Frazier and Brewer matriculated in 2014, not 2015. So this is their 5th year.

This is really good news. Wayne always tried to recruit young men who would be successful in life and on the diamond and although it was harder to recruit to superstar athletes, he remained true to getting kids who would be successful in the classroom.

As a former RBI head I know that Mr. Lassiter, myself and Sarah Longpre took great pride in the fact that the money we raised helped relieve some of the burdens Rice baseball players confront when coping with the academic rigors of Rice. Ron's wife, Ella Lee, actually came up with the concept of raising funds to have team meals on the road so the kids would not have to eat garbage off the per diem we provided in places like Hawaii. When I led the RBI Club, we even expanded on this concept by taking the players to a really nice meal on the Thursday night before a road trip. Of course the successful fundraising for baseball players, even though they are the athletes sent off campus more than any other sport by far, was not popular with some "higher ups" who wanted to keep those funds for the Owl Club and saw every dollar we raised for baseball as a problem for them.

I honestly don't know if the current RBI club has raised any money or not, but I do know that the team meals are gone and that the kids are dumped back at the hotel on road trips to order Uber eats or Pizza. This truly saddens me. For those of you writing checks to this new RBI thing that the administration created, I will simply state that it is a completely different animal and you should not assume that the accountability or objectives the previous RBI leadership provided is still in place.