ONLINE EXCLUSIVE The No. 2 women’s water polo team extends its home win streak to 40.
Student Newspaper of the University of Southern California Since 1912 | VOL. 163, NO. 17 | www.dailytrojan.com FRIDAY , FEBRUARY 8, 2008
getting koky
England’s indie rock band The Kooks bring
their live show to the Echo tonight. 5
usc beats huskies
Freshman guard O.J. Mayo scored
29 points in the Trojans’ 73-59
victory over Washington. 12
Writers’ strike is
likely to end soon
By ARIEL EDWARDS-LEVY
The Daily Trojan
Fans of “The Office,” “Grey’s
Anatomy” and “House,” rejoice
— the wait for new shows may
be almost over. The three-month
Writers Guild of America strike
against the Alliance of Motion
Picture and Television Producers
might be coming to a close.
Membership-only meetings
have been scheduled Saturday in
Los Angeles and New York for the
WGA to discuss terms of a tenta-tive
agreement between the writers
and the AMPTP, according to the
WGA website.
The Los Angeles meeting will
be held at the Shrine Auditorium.
Although nothing has officially
been settled, it appears that strike
negotiators have reached common
ground, said Jack Epps, Jr., the
chair of the division of Writing for
Screen and Television at USC.
He said it is likely that the “ba-sic
tenets of the deal are in place,”
and that the deal is currently un-der
review by lawyers.
Guild members are optimistic
that a deal might be reached, he
added.
If a deal is reached between ne-gotiators,
the guild’s board of di-rectors
will recommend whether
or not to approve it and members
will vote on the settlement.
The strike began over concern
about the residuals guild members
receive for work shown online, as
well as rules governing how long
online content can be shown as
promotional material, Epps said.
Any deal approved by the board
is likely to pass a vote, he said.
Gregg Mitchell, a spokesman
for WGA West, declined to com-ment,
citing a press blackout, but
referred to a Feb. 5 letter from
WGA Negotiating Committee
Chair John F. Bowman.
“While we have made impor-tant
progress since the companies
re-engaged us in serious talks,
negotiations continue,” the letter
read. “Regardless of what you hear
or read, there are many significant
points that have yet to be worked
out.”
The letter also urged WGA
members to keep picketing.
The strike, which began Nov. 5,
has affected the television-watch-ing
habits of many USC students.
Katie Leyva, a sophomore ma-joring
in vocal arts, said she has
been watching mostly cable reruns
and “Project Runway” since her
favorite scripted shows went off
the air. She said she will begin to
watch scripted shows again if the
strike is settled.
“The main thing I was worried
about was the Oscars,” she said.
The strike has also disrupted
job and internship prospects for
students in the School of Cin-ematic
Arts.
“I’ve been trying to get some-thing
out of school for a while now
because there’s not many projects
going on,” said Douglas Jessup, a
second-year graduate student in
film production. “There are just
not any internships.”
Nathalie Porras, a junior major-ing
in writing for screen and tele-vision,
said she agreed with the
writers’ aims and would be glad if
a settlement was agreed upon.
“Writers don’t always have
steady jobs, and sometimes the
only form of income is residuals,”
she said.
Porras said most of the writ-ing
department’s faculty, many of
whom are WGA members, had
to picket, but it did not disrupt
classes.
Larry Auerbach, the associate
dean of the School, said a settle-ment
would allow students and
faculty to resume selling their
work and looking for jobs.
“This is the opportunity most
of us are looking for,” he said. “It
puts everything back into play.”
Auerbach also said the industry
might be changed in the aftermath
of the strike.
Some possible outcomes in-clude
an abbreviated television
buying and selling season, fewer
pilots being produced and fewer
WGA members will meet
at the Shrine to discuss
tentative agreements.
| see strike, page 2 |
Adam Forouzandeh | Daily Trojan
Job search | Students meet potential employers at USC’s career fair on Trousdale Parkway, which is
held each semester. The event brings companies from a myriad of professions to campus.
Marshall pilots management software
By NICOLE DAILO
Daily Trojan
The Marshall School of Busi-ness
has incorporated an IBM
computer simulation program that
aims to train students in business-process
management into several
of its classes for the semester.
The program, “Innov8,” will
help students learn how compa-nies
can carry out specific opera-tions
productively and efficiently.
IBM created the program to ad-dress
the lack of business-process
management skills in the business
world, said Dave Daniel, a repre-sentative
of IBM. The idea for the
game came from proposals submit-ted
by business students during an
IBM-sponsored case competition.
The company worked on the
program for a year before launch-ing
it in November. USC was one
of 38 colleges and universities
worldwide that agreed to pilot “In-nov8.”
Marshall officials decided to use
the game to foster its ongoing re-lationship
with IBM, a company
that has consistently recruited
students and worked with faculty
to bring more technology into the
classroom, said Cathy Fuller, direc-tor
of corporate relations.
“We here at the business school,
at Marshall, are working to create
partnerships with companies, and
we try to do many things to help
the companies achieve their goals,”
she said.
Marshall’s Department of Infor-mation
and Operations Manage-ment
oversees most of the classes
currently using “Innov8,” which
puts students in typical situations
a business-process management
specialist might face. Because the
program is interactive, professors
see it as a valuable addition to
their lectures.
“The game was a good opportu-nity
to see how a company would
apply concepts learned in the
classroom,” said Amy Ward, an as-sistant
professor at Marshall. “It
gives you a framework for making
operational decisions and it maps
out how to take your raw materials
and turn them into a product.”
But since the game is still in its
early stages of use, Ward said she
was still unsure of how to incorpo-rate
it into her class, either as a pre-view
of concepts to come or as an
integral component of her lectures
throughout the semester.
For now, Ward said she is simply
assessing her students’ responses
to the game to determine if she
should use it permanently.
“One of the things we’re trying
to figure out is if this is something
that should be incorporated for the
future,” she said. “I think the ulti-mate
intention is to see how this
will work into the curriculum in a
beneficial, educational way.”
Students familiar with the game
said it gave them a better idea of
what types of problems they would
experience once they entered the
working world, valuable knowl-edge
that classes alone could not
teach them.
“It correlated only minimally
with what we were learning in
class,” said Tiffanie De La Riva,
a junior majoring in business ad-ministration.
“It’s more effective
in giving us a preview of the real
world.”
The game accurately reflects the
dynamic of the workplace, showing
how failing to complete certain ob-jectives
can lead to the loss of one’s
job, said Tyler Inouye, a junior ma-joring
in business administration.
But despite the game’s visual ap-peal
and relevance to the business
world, students said it could use
some improvements.
“It was so dramatic, it was laugh-able,”
De La Riva said.
Marshall officials plan to evalu-ate
the success of the program in
undergraduate courses before ex-panding
it to their MBA program.
As of January, more than 300 stu-dents
have played “Innov8,” Ward
said.
The simulation program will
teach students to manage
business operations.
OPINION | Students need to follow USG
elections, writes columnist Amy Baack. PAGE 4