Tuesday
Septembers, 1997 Vol. CXXXII, No. 22
Headlines
Rushing attack awakens in win
Tailback LaVale Woods, named the starter earlier in the week, ran for 129 yards and scored two touchdowns as USC defeated California, 27-17, Saturday at Memorial Stadium in Berkeley, Calif.
Sports, page 20
L.A. — the land of sun, surf and sand
In southern California, natives tend to take the coastline granted. For those who may not know where to go, Staff Writer Annie Mateen explores some of the area's best beaches.
Diversions, page 10
Grant of $1 billion won't help anyone
Ted Turner's recent gift of $1 billion to be rationed out over 10 years seems a bit misguided, states Editorial Columnist Kimo Koshi, who examines who will benefit from this generous deposit.
Viewpoint, page 4
F.Y.l.
Genesis session, band submissions
"Temptation," the third discussion in a series of 10 Tuesday afternoon sessions, will be held in Topping Student Center, room 204 from 4 to 5 p.m. today.
Discussion leaders for this session includes Tom Habinek, a professor in the Classics Department, and Dr. Gloria Haitnman, director of the USC Bahd'f Club.
The session is open to students, faculty and staff, Refreshments will be served.
For more information, call (213) 740-6110 or send an e-mail to laemmle@mizar. usc.edu.
• ••
The Nashville Entertainment Association is accepting band submissions for the NeA EXTRAVAGANZA '98 in February in Music Citv.
Interested artists should send a three-song cassette or CD, biography, photo, artist application form and $10 to P.O. Box 121948, Nashville, TN 37212. The entry deadline is today.
Newspaper of the University of Southern California
Bike thefts decrease after arrest
By Kyle Buchanan
Staff Writer
Following a recent rash of stolen bicycles, Department of Public Safety officers arrested a non-university-affiliated man for bike theft last week.
Although no connections have been made between the suspect and the spate of six bike thefts prior to tne arrest, "it's kind of interesting that we've had a decline in bike thefts now that he's been arrested," said DPS Deputy Chief Bob Taylor.
The suspect was arrested last Tuesday after DPS officers noticed a man carrying a bicycle wheel near 30th ana Hoover streets. When the DPS officers stopped him to ask him about the wheel, the man said that he had found it at the Sigma Nu
fraternity house and was given permission to take it.
However, when DPS officers escorted the suspect back to Sigma Nu, "they heard resounding cheers coming from the fraternity house," Taylor said. "(The fraternity members) saw this gentleman who the officers had in tow and recognized him as being the one who had stolen the bicycle from one of their members."
The suspect was then arrested and transported to Southwest Jail.
Taylor said that most bike thefts have resulted from improper locking or no locks at all, including several of the cases in the recent slew of incidents. He cited two cases, one of a student who left his bike outside a fraternity house and returned to
find someone riding away on it, and another involving a bike that had been locked around a three-foot high pole.
"In that case, the individual who stole the bike simply picked up the bike, lifted it over the pole and then carried it down the street," Taylor said.
DPS Officer Gerald Baker warned that many students are not only endangering their bicycles, but also breaking the law when they lock their bicycles to handicapped racks or any other type of rail, such as those in front of the bookstore.
Baker also said that since thieves commonly remove the back tire to detacn a bike from the rack, the best locking position for a bike is "the back tire locked through the (bike) frame, then the bike locked down to the
bike rack."
"My recommendation would be for a 'U'-type lock rather than a chain," Taylor said, adding that chains are less sturdy and are easier for thieves to break.
To aid in the police's retrieval of stolen bikes, Baker recommended that students register their bikes as California law dictates. Registration costs $3 and equips the student with a renewal sticker for their bikes.
The serial number is sent to the Los Angeles Police Department and if the bike is stolen or lost, police can trace the number to find the bike's owner. DPS registers bikes from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. every day in front of Hancock Auditorium, Baker said.
New permit system adds confusion
By Michelle Powers
Staff Writer
Leavey groups offer link to geographic past
By Shant Thomas
Staff Writer
Students interested in exploring the past in a more detailed way can pull up images of the Dead Sea Scrolls from the internet or chart the geographic history of their neighborhoods through several online programs at Leavey Library.
The Ancient Manuscripts Digitization and Distribution Project (AMDDP) and the Information System for Los Angeles (ISLA), located in the Information Commons in the basement of Leavey, are both using new digital technology to reconstruct the past.
The use of computers facilitates epigraphy, or the reading of ancient scripts, because it allows the insertion, deletion, and piecing together of characters and sentences "virtually," said Bruce Zuckerman, manager of West Semitic Research Project (WSRP).
The project incorporates the use of a high resolution scanner, several Macintosh computers and sophisticated archival technologies. Students can access the scanned documents online, but the ISLA online site will not be available to the public until March.
Using photographic and computer imaging techniques, the AMDDP, in conjunction with WSRP, converts ancient manuscript pictorial archives into high-resolution digital images, according to the WSRP web site.
"Something of this magnitude — to my knowledge, at least — has never been done before," said Zuckerman, an associate professor of religion. "Even when we started this in the 1980s, we envisioned a cutting edge technological program."
WSRP utilizes the internet to distribute the information to the public through their web site at umw.usc.edu/dept/lAS/wsrp/index.html. Two different branches for script analyzation
are also offered on WSRP's web page: the educational site, which is primarily geared toward students and educators, and the scholarly site, which catalogs the extensive contents of the AMDDP archives.
With a recent research grant from the Annenberg Foundation, AMDDP upgraded their facilities and established the we© page on which they publish their findings.
The ISLA project, sister project of AMDDP, combines aerial photography, satellite images, historical information, and an advanced search engine to explore the history of Los Angeles and its surrounding area.
"Both the WSRP and the ISLA utilize techniques which are very similar,” Zuckerman said. "ISLA has a lot to offer us, and we to ISLA."
Li Hunt, project manager for ISLA, said (See Projects, page 3)
Students who park in university lots are experiencing difficulties with the new policy implemented by Transportation Services. This policy requires that students place the adhesive parking sticker in the drivers' side corner of their vehicles, instead of hanging a transferable parking permit, which was used during previous school years.
On Tuesday, Sept. 23, Jason Jongjin Yoo, a graduate student in engineering, returned from class to find a ticket on his windshield for the improper display of his parking permit. The ticket, issued by a USC parking official, charged Yoo $35 for attaching his parking sticker to a clear plastic hanger ana displaying it on his rearview mirror.
Dat Chau, a junior majoring in pharmacy, encountered the same problem last week at the University Parking Center on Hope Street, acquiring tickets three days in a row for the same offense.
Last week, both students submitted a letter of complaint to Transportation Services, and then to the Department of Public Safety in hopes of getting the tickets dismissed.
"When I picked up my parking sticker at the transportation office, I received no information, oral or written, that failure to display the parking sticker on the bottom left side of the windshield was a ticketable offense," Yoo
Mlchaal Lavtna / Dally irojan
A car in Parking Structure X displays a hanging parking permit taped to its windshield.
said.
Brian d'Autremont, director of Transportation Services, said students were told specifically about the change in policy regarding the use of transferable permits, and that there was a newsletter handed out to all students who picked up a permit at the Transportation Services Office at the beginning of this year. There were notices given to Customer Service Centers as well, he said.
Chau said in his letter to DPS that no gate
attendants or DPS officers had ever issued him a warning upon driving through a USC gate or parking lot.
D'Autremont said that for the first 12 days of classes this semester, Transportation Services officers were stationed in front of parking structures to issue warnings to people who had displayed their permits incorrectly.
(See Permits, page 2)