Vanessa Rodriguez I Daily Trojan
About two dozen students representing various groups on campus protest during a keynote address by affirmative action opponent Ward Connerly Tuesday night. In addition to marching on campus and demonstrating outside the Davidson Conference Center, the protesters staged a silent protest inside during the speech. See page 2»
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By COURTNEY WILLIS
Daily Trojan
The USC University Hospital has salvaged its liver transplantation program after the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services, a division of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, reported “standard-level deficiencies within the program.”
The program was allowed to stay open after the hospital provided the center an acceptable plan of correction, said Deborah Romero, the western consortium survey and certification operations manager for CMS.
The plan, which has already gone into effect, outlines specific changes to be made to the hospital’s employment policies.
Critters cause headache for Cardinal Gardens apartments
Students m the USC housing complex start a petition to get a rodent prottem under control
By ASHLEY ARCHIBALD
Daily Trojan
Coming home to find feces on newly cleaned sheets is no longer a surprise for students living in Cardinal Gardens
Residents of the university-run housing complex are now petitioning the university to address the vermin problems some say have
made their homes virtually unliv-able for months.
Mice in the heaters and closets, termites in the beds and cockroaches in the kitchens have become a regular part of life in some units of Cardinal Gardens, residents say.
“We found mouse droppings on all our beds and my roommates found it in their closets and on their chairs," said Leandra Pacheco-Caballero, a sophomore majoring in health and humanity. “It’s getting really ridiculous.''
Pacheco-Caballero and her roommates started a petition that they hope will eventually make its way
to President Steven B Sample’s office.
“We’re starting a petition because we want some sort of compensation," Pacheco-Caballero said “For us to be paying this much and for USC's reputation it’s not acceptable.”
At the heart of the petition is a request that the housing problems be fixed and residents be compensated in the form of a rent reduction or simple compensation for the time and money spent combating the pests.
When the vermin first became a problem, Pacheco-Caballero and
her three roommates followed Tro-janHousing procedure and alerted the management by turning in work-order forms to request that the problem be fixed. The response, they said, was lackluster. -
“(The workers) don't show up on time and sometimes we wonder if they’ve shown up at all," Pacheco-Caballero said. “The process is long and we've had to take care of it ourselves.”
Conditions got bad enough in their unit during the winter break that one of Pacheco-Caballero's roommates, Daphne Opoku, a junior majoring in health promotion
and disease prevention, temporarily moved in with a friend to escape the unclean living conditions.
The smell, in particular, became quite a problem
“It stinks in here. We have to leave the heater on all the time because the mice are living in here and that really makes it smell," Opoku said.
The problems began in the fall when the roommates discovered termites in their beds The roach population, which was not an immediate concern, grew dramatically over the successive months Then I see RODENTS page 17
STUDENT NEWSPAPER OF THE UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA SINCE 1912
v/OL 160
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WEDNESDAY. JANUARY 17, 2007
USC liver center to stay open
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Trojans lose to No. 2 UCLA»
USC loses a heartbreaker to the Bruins, 65-64, on a last-second shot.
Protest | Students rally for affirmative action
	
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