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NEWSPAPER OF THE UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
THU1SDAY
December 2,1999 Vol. CXXXVIII, No. 62
Licenses may prevent bike theft
Clime: New shipment of materials for registration could reduce the number of bicycles stolen at USC
By PETER HOWARD KAZANJIAN
Staff Writer
After a two-month absence, the Department of Public Safety received a new shipment of bike license tags that it hopes will reduce the amount of stolen bicycles on campus.
Although there has not been a recent increase in bike theft on campus, many bikes are reported stolen each week, said DPS Deputy Chief Bob Taylor. Having an actual license tag placed on one’s bike may help reduce the chance of it being taken, he added.
“Simply, when a bicycle is licensed, there is a greater opportunity for us to recover the bicycle,” Taylor said. “The licensing system is a statewide system, so when someone gets a license for their bicycle, its serial number is registered with the state.
“If the bike is reported stolen, and if we later have a opportunity to run that serial number, we’ll know immediately if that bike was in fact stolen and will have an opportunity to return it to the owner.”
About one bike per day is stolen on campus, said DPS officer Gerald Baker. Nearly 5,000 to 6,000 bikes are on campus each day. Only about 2,000 of those bikes are licensed each year, he added.
Students have varying opinions about the issue. Liz Liggett, an undeclared sophomore, said she has refrained from buying a bike, simply because she is wary of theft.
“I’d love to have a bike at school to make it quicker to get to classes, but I’m afraid that it will get stolen,” she said.
Other students said they thought the university should take additional measures to protect student’s property.
“If your bike gets stolen, you have serious issues locking it up,” said Philippe Kassouf, a sophomore majoring in aerospace engineering. “But I must say, more lighting around bike rack areas wouldn’t hurt either...especially for students who are on campus late at night.”
However, some students said bikes are stolen even if they are locked up. Jose Aguirre, a sophomore majoring in biomedical engineering, had his bike taken one evening in September.
“I was more shocked than angry when it happened,” Aguirre said. “I think it’s ridiculous that a bike parked in the center of campus and locked to the bike rack got stolen. It had three locks on it — three locks. Plus, it was parked by the ATMs next to the bookstore, where there should be some type of patrol at night.”
Aguirre has purchased another bike and still rides it to campus. He only locks it with one lock now, explaining that if it was stolen with three locks, then the number of locks on it does not seem to matter.
“Frequently, what thieves do is they look for bikes without a license,” Taylor said. “Those are the bikes they pick on and those are the bikes they take. So, by virtue of having a license, it is a deterrent to the bike
I see License, page 3 I
Elizabeth Tabis I Daily Trojan
Under lock and key. Jeremy Wu, a sophomore majoring in music industry, locks his bike. About one bike per day is stolen on campus, DPS officials said.
Taking class may improve overall GPAs
Study: Professor demonstrates relationship between course, college success in his new book
By BRENDAN LOY
Staff Writer
An education course in motivation and learning strategies that has been offered for five years at USC is now the subject of a research paper and a book by its professor, Myron Dembo.
His preliminary research indicates that taking the course during students’ freshman years correlates with a statistically significant increase in students’ grade-point averages during their sophomore and junior years.
The class, Educational Psychology and Technology 110, is being taught this semester and is also offered in the spring by the Rossier School of Education. It is a four-unit elective course that does not count toward any major, although students in the Structured Curriculum Project are required to take it.
Dembo’s book based on the class, Motivation and Learning Strategies for College Success: A Self-Management Approach, will be in bookstores this month. Dembo’s research on the class was first published earlier this year in a paper that he co-authored with Terrance Jakubowski. The study compared a group of students who took EDPT 110 to a control group of students who did not take the class.
The control group was given a “head start,” as those students entered college with higher high school GPAs than the students who took the class. Yet despite their early advantage, by the time they reached their third semester in college, the students who did not take EDPT 110 were trailing 0.04 grade points behind those had taken it, and by their fourth semester the gap was 0.13 points, based on an average of more than 100 students.
The difference dropped to 0.05 points in the fifth semester, but the statistics are still enough to establish, at least preliminarily, an apparent pattern, Dembo said.
The study also shows that among the students who took EDPT 110, the ones who received better grades in that course were more likely to stay in school than those who received lower grades.
“It’s the first theoretical approach to how to improve people’s learning,” Dembo said of the class. “In the past, they had what is called ‘study skills programs’ (that) taught people how to take notes. But this is really an academic course (where) you don’t only learn about learning, you learn to apply it.”
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Online brokers can offer discounts and first pick of IPOs
A column appearing every Thursday that looks at student finance
Money: Web offers the chance for students to invest in some of many companies going public
By JATVTN KARNANI
Staff Writer
Want to turn that spare change in your pocket into a fast buck? With the stock market barreling through record territory as corporate profits continue to beat expectations, making money on it is both feasible and possible.
The most eagerly sought after type of equity is the Initial Public Offering. Heard of AOL? How about Amazon.com, eBay, Priceline or even Yahoo!? AOL is worth some $175 billion today, roughly $80 per share, which could have been had at the split-adjusted IPO price in 1992 of around 10 cents each. Last year, AOL was offered for around $12 a share: still a tidy profit.
The same story goes for most of the other internet companies that have gone public this decade. Once reserved for the wealthy clients of premier investment banks, opportunities abound in this age of the individual investor to get in on these hot IPOs.
Don’t bet on getting too many of them, however, as demand often outstrips supply, leaving many individual investors wanting.
The most cost-effective way to trade in the stock market would be to open an account with a discount broker, in other words, an online broker. Each broker charges a different commission to buy and sell orders, from $8 per trade and up.
Of course, some brokers do provide extra bells and whistles, such as access to IPOs, free research on stocks and after-hours trading, among others. Mostbrokers require a $1,000 minimum to open an account, and some even offer enticements such as gift cer-
tificates and free trades.
E*Trade (www.etrade.com), one of the more popular online brokers, charges $19.95 for limit orders, in which one determines a set price at which to buy or sell a stock. These differ from market orders, in which the order will be executed at the given market price when the order was entered. E’Trade offers free real-time quotes, specialized discussion groups and high-yielding interest rate payments on balances.
DLJdirect (www.dljdirect.com) is more for the affluent investor, supplying access to IPOs only to clients with $100,000 or more in their accounts.
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