Student Newspaper of the University of Southern California Since 1912 | VOL. 163, NO. 6 | www.dailytrojan.com
THURSDAY, JANUARY 24, 2008
Students turn out for
registration week
By KATELYN JOHNSON
Daily Trojan
Campus organizations’ final
attempt to register students to
vote before the California prima-ry
deadline ended Tuesday, with
more than 500 students register-ing
on Tuesday alone.
CalPIRG, which hosted Tues-day’s
registration drive, stationed
itself near Tommy Trojan on the
first day of classes this semester.
It paid off, as CalPIRG reached
its goal of registering more than
1,000 voters during the weeklong
drive.
The convenience of registering
to vote on campus enticed many
students.
“I probably would’ve made an
effort to register elsewhere, but
this is just so much more conve-nient,”
said Lindsay Sugimoto, a
freshman majoring in business ad-ministration.
“It definitely makes
people more inclined to vote.”
Other students who had pre-viously
registered, however, said
they appreciated CalPIRG’s ef-forts.
“I registered to vote before I
came to college, so I didn’t need to
use CalPIRG,” said Lisa Fugere, a
sophomore majoring in English.
“It’s nice that they make it easier
to vote, though.”
Registering students on the
first day of classes brought chal-lenges
to the drive, said CalPIRG
New Voters Project Coordinator
Shena Popat, a sophomore major-ing
in health promotions and eco-nomics.
“In 2006, we had more time to
organize volunteers and to get the
word out,” Popat said. “But this
year, we had to start right on the
first day of classes in order to have
enough time. It made it more dif-ficult,
but I’m still happy with how
it turned out.”
CalPIRG’s booth in Haan
Plaza attracts more than
1,000 voters.
| see vote, page 13 |
Top Los Angeles law officials bring
discussion forum to USC campus
By CALIE SCHWEITZER and
SILVA SEVLIAN
Daily Trojan
USC Annenberg’s Institute for
Justice and Journalism sponsored
a three-day conference at USC this
week, which provided a forum for
some of Los Angeles’ top justice of-ficials
to discuss improvements to
local law enforcement.
The conference, which began Tues-day
morning and continues today,
serves to harbor discussion about
not only the future of crime manage-ment
in Los Angeles, but also the
successes and failings of its past.
Joe Domanick, senior fellow for
criminal justice of the Institute for
Justice and Journalism, said he cre-ated
the event in hopes of bringing
together crime justice professionals
who desire to help change the sys-tem.
“We wanted to explore the pos-sibilities
and see what changes the
criminal justice establishment will be
willing to make,” he said.
Top justice officials such as LAPD
Chief William Bratton, Los Angeles
County Sheriff Lee Baca and Los An-geles
County District Attorney Steve
Cooley attended parts of the confer-ence,
which features panel discus-sions
and addresses on the confer-ence’s
topic, “A look at the present, a
model for the future and a blueprint
for media coverage.”
Domanick, who also served as the
moderator for the event, pointed to
the 70 percent recidivism rate among
criminals in Los Angeles county to
show how the L.A. County Justice
System is not operating properly.
“They’re not doing a good job at
The Institute for Justice
and Journalism suggests
alternatives to crowded jails.
Two students are
victims of e-mail scam
By SARAH DADA
Daily Trojan
Two USC students were vic-tims
of a fraudulent e-mail sent to
students and faculty at USC and
Ohio State University through
their e-mail accounts Monday af-ternoon.
The e-mail, which asked them
to verify their e-mail account pass-words,
was sent from a non-USC
e-mail addresses to 400 USC stu-dents
and faculty and presented
itself as a university sanctioned
message telling students to update
their accounts. The e-mail sent to
OHS students also pretended to
come from the university and had
the same message.
“We are currently upgrading our
data base [sic] and e-mail account
center. We are deleting all unused
USC e-mail account [sic] to create
more space for new accounts. To
prevent your account from closing
you will have to update it below so
that we will know that it’s a pres-ent
[sic] used account,” the mes-sage
said.
The e-mail then asked students
to respond with their e-mail ad-dress,
password, date of birth and
country or territory where they
live.
The fraudulent e-mails were
sent out between about noon and
3 p.m., but Information Technol-ogy
Services sent a warning e-mail
to students and faculty at 2 p.m.
after the fraudulent e-mails were
forwarded to ITS. The ITS mes-sage
warned students that the
e-mail was not sent by USC and
they should not respond.
“Someone who received the e-mail
forwarded it to us, and at
that time, we sent out the warning
e-mail from ITS to all students,
faculty and staff,” Director of
Communications for ITS Kevin
Durkin said.
The message was sent to stu-dents
from two different non-
USC e-mail addresses (uscteam@
bellsouth.net and uscteam50@
bellsouth.net).
Although ITS knows the e-mail
addresses, there is no way for them
to find out who sent the message
Two people did respond to the
first round of e-mails, but once
they received the ITS e-mail tell-ing
them about the fraud, they
changed their passwords immedi-ately,
Durkin said.
If an e-mail password is acquired
through spam, the spammer could
have complete access to the e-mail
account and all the information
within the account, including bank
statements and other password
protected information.
The account could also be used
to send out more fraudulent e-mails
in the future.
Students respond to a
fraudulent e-mail asking for
password verification.
| see identity, page 12 |
| see conference, page 6 |
BRUIN KILLERS
USC outside hitter Juan Figueroa leads
the men’s volleyball with 20 kills in
the Trojans win over the Bruins. 20
OPENING NIGHT »
USC produced and directed
“Spirit of the Marathon” hits
theaters tonight only. 7
»
SPORTS |
Women’s basket-ball
takes on Or-egon
State tonight
at 7 p.m. at the
Galen Center.
PAGE 18
LIFESTYLE |
Columnist Tim
Loc rags on
message board
stupidity about
Nicolas Cage.
PAGE 7
OPINION | In
normally sunny
Los Angeles few
can appreciate
a little rainfall,
writes columnist
Keaton Gray.
PAGE 4
Jonathan Wong | Daily Trojan
Rock the Registration | Students register to vote on Trousdale before the Feb. 4 California primary.
Josh Sy | Daily Trojan
A Call to Arms| Officials present the future of law enforcement.