ONLINE EXCLUSIVE Go online for coverage of the USC Stevens Institute’s new Facebook application.
Student Newspaper of the University of Southern California Since 1912 | VOL. 163, NO. 33 | www.dailytrojan.com wednesday, march 5, 2008
lost and found
Mendelson finds that value is in the search
as he seeks remnants of his family’s
Holocaust history in “The Lost.” 7
Under the tide
The USC baseball team had four errors in
its 10-5 loss to No. 24 Pepperdine
on Tuesday afternoon. 16
Photo courtesy of Dillon Nichols
Survivors | During his trip to Kirehe, Rwanda over winter break, USC student Dillon Nichols spent
time with natives at one of the health clinics founded by Paul Farmer and Partners in Health.
USC tram driver retires after 34 years
By LAURA SIMURDA
Daily Trojan
After 34 years as a USC tram
driver, Francisco Lopez — whose
riders have described his rides as
memorable and enjoyable — retired
Monday.
Emigrating from Guatemala in
1973 to the United States, Lopez
first began working as a janitor at
USC because he lacked a firm grasp
of the English language.
But after three years of studying
English, he felt confident enough
with his communication skills to
request a transfer to the transporta-tion
department, beginning his long
career there.
Thanks to his enthusiastic de-meanor,
he began cultivating strong
relationships with the regular riders
on his tram.
“It’s almost like a family on my
tram,” Lopez said.
Over the years, Lopez drove a
number of tram routes, including
routes A and B as well as the route
to Bunker Hill.
Students and staff said they have
enjoyed sharing their mornings and
afternoons with Lopez.
“He’s the nicest shuttle driver that
I’ve ever come into contact with, and
I ride a lot of shuttles,” said Valerie
Fitzgerald, a supervisor with the
Degree Progress Department of the
Registrar’s Office.
Many staff said they will miss
seeing Lopez on their commute to
work.
Tram driver Francisco Lopez
impacted students who
came along for the ride.
| see lopez, page 3 |
Adults consider Internet to
be important, study finds
By JENNIFER SMITH
Daily Trojan
In a 2008 study, The Annen-berg
Center for the Digital Future
found that more than two-thirds
of adults under 50 believe online
communities are extremely impor-tant
in their lives.
The study is part of an annual
eight-year-long project that tracks
the impact the Internet has on
adults.
Jeffrey Cole, research director
for the Annenberg Center for the
Digital Future, said he was in-spired
to conduct the annual sur-vey
after realizing researchers had
lost a valuable opportunity by not
annually surveying the impact of
television on American life.
“I had become convinced
around 1997/1998 that the impact
of the Internet would be far more
significant than television,” Cole
said. “Our goal here was to do
the study of the Internet that we
should have done for television in
the 1940s.”
College students were included
Online communities have
overwhelmingly affected the
lives of college students.
| see internet, page 6 |
Foundation documents
Rwandan genocide
By JEAN GUERERO
Daily Trojan
The USC Shoah Foundation
Institute for Visual History and
Education has taken the latest ini-tiative
in university-related efforts
to shed light on the Rwandan geno-cide,
during which almost 1 million
Rwandans were methodically mur-dered
in 100 days.
Next month, the institute’s ex-ecutive
director, Douglas Green-berg,
will travel to Rwanda to begin
organizing a project with IBUKA,
the umbrella organization for all of
the 1994 Rwandan Tutsi Genocide
survivor groups. Greenberg and
IBUKA plan to interview Rwan-dan
survivors about their experi-ences
during the genocide.
Greenberg said these visual tes-timonies
will be available on the in-stitute’s
online archive, the largest
of its kind in the world, to educate
people about the harmful effects of
prejudice.
“Rwanda looms, I think, as a
moment of international failure
with respect to genocide, and it
looms as one of the most egregious
violations of human rights in the
last couple of decades,” Greenberg
said.
IBUKA officials will mainly con-duct
the interviews in Rwanda, but
Greenberg said the Shoah Founda-tion
will provide technological and
financial assistance.
The Shoah Foundation, found-ed
in 1994, has already collected
about 52,000 visual testimonies
from people who were targeted by
the Nazis during the Holocaust be-tween
1933 and 1945.
“[The testimonies] transcend
continental barriers by providing
a window to other people’s experi-ences,”
said Kathy Schmidt, a ju-nior
majoring in psychology who
is the executive director of the
USC International Student Coali-tion
Against Genocide:: 1 Million
Strong 4 Rwanda.
Schmidt said the visual testimo-nies
have aided humanitarianism
because of their ability to depict
the situation.
“When you see these testimo-nies,
you see [the survivors] in real
life and students actually start to
cry,” she said.
Greenberg said the Holocaust
project was only the beginning of
“an unfortunately long list of other
examples of racism and violence
that need to be documented.”
The Holocaust survivor testimo-nies
are searchable from the USC
network and those of 14 other uni-versities
throughout the world.
Many USC professors said they
are appreciative of the Shoah Foun-dation’s
latest project.
USC Shoah Foundation calls
attention to genocide with
archive of visual testimonies.
| see shoah, page 3 |
Leah Thompson | Daily Trojan
Veteran driver | Francisco Lopez began working at USC after he
emigrated to the United States from Guatemala in 1973. Opinion |
Columnist Laura Reeve
recounts the perils of the
L.A. Marathon. PAGE 4