Student Newspaper of the University of Southern California Since 1912 | www.dailytrojan.com | VOL. 165, NO. 22 | Thursday September 25, 2008
InDEX
2 · News Digest
4 · Opinion
7 · Lifestyle
8 · Sudoku
16 · Classifieds
20 · Sports
’80s Flashback: ‘Knight
Rider’ returns to the tube
with more action. PAGE 7
Thursday Throwdown: USC
heads to Corvallis for nationally
televised game. PAGE 20
By Tiffanie wu
Daily Trojan
Undergraduate Student Government
hosted an emergency town hall meeting
Wednesday night at Bovard auditorium,
where students, law enforcement officials
and university administrators gathered to
discuss safety in light of a recent series of
violent incidents, including the killing of a
student last week.
During the meeting announcements were
made by LAPD, Department of Public Safety
and TrojanTransportation regarding chang-es
that have occurred since the incidents.
LAPD Commander Andrew J. Smith an-nounced
to students that a suspect was ar-rested
in the Bryan Frost case, but did not
provide any further information about the
arrest.
“This is a very unusual incident for us;
the last homicide that I know of on the cam-pus
occurred 15 years ago and involved, I be-lieve,
a drug transaction involving a student,”
Smith said.
TrojanTransportation Director Tony
Mazza unveiled the 800-USC-TAXI Initiative,
a new program for students that allows them
to pay for Yellow Cab taxis with USC discre-tionary
money, to be launched Oct. 1.
Mazza also announced a new GPS mes-saging
system for Campus Cruiser that will
enable students to track cruisers online.
Hannah Fetting, a senior majoring in
health promotion and disease prevention,
said she wanted more information on DPS
policies. “What can students do to better
USG outlines cruiser plan at meeting
Town hall responds to concerns
about student safety following last
week’s fatal stabbing of a student.
| see Town hall, page 13 |
Suspect is
arrested in
stabbing
By chandler rabens
Daily Trojan
A higher education industry
watchdog has released a new re-port
that it hopes will make ap-plying
for financial aid far easier
for college students.
The report, released last
Thursday and partially funded by
the College Board, calls for elimi-nation
of the FAFSA system, sim-plifying
tax credits for families
of students receiving aid and re-structuring
government loans.
“Our goal is to close the gaps
between the enrollment rates of
students from low-income fam-ilies
and those from more af-fluent
families,” said Kathleen
Little, a senior executive direc-tor
of financial aid services for
the College Board. “We want to
make sure our reforms are di-rected
to students displaying fi-nancial
need.”
The plan would remove the
distinction between subsidized
and unsubsidized government
loans. Instead, students would
first be given unsubsidized loans
and the opportunity to apply for
subsidization based on their in-come
after graduation.
Substituting for the old FAFSA
forms, the government would ac-quire
all financial documents di-rectly
from the IRS. A new ap-plication
would require only a
parent signature and a list of
schools to be sent financial in-formation.
At USC, students and admin-istrators
said the proposal would
help make the complicated fi-nancial
aid game easier to navi-gate.
Amy Vidor, a freshman ma-joring
in English, said she would
look forward to a restructuring
in the financial aid application
process.
“I wasted innumerable hours
compiling the necessary calcula-tions
from the FAFSA’s confusing
worksheets to the actual applica-tion.
And I don’t even know if it
was worth it — I still have thou-sands
of dollars of loans to re-pay,”
Vidor said.
Susan Ikerd, USC’s director
of Financial Aid, said the finan-cial
aid application process is es-pecially
daunting for families of
first-generation college students
and middle-income families who
are being squeezed by the chang-ing
economy.
“The entire application pro-cess
has become very complicat-ed
and the FAFSA, in particular,
is an extremely complex docu-ment,”
she said.
Ikerd says she’s heard repeat-edly
from parents who say com-pleting
the FAFSA was worse
than filing their tax returns.
“We would support anything
that would simplify the appli-cation
process for families,” she
Proposal would simplify federal financial aid process
Watchdog’s plan calls for eliminating FAFSA, simplifying
application, merging tax credits for families and adding loans.
| see aid, page 15 |
By Silva sevlian
Daily Trojan
In an effort to make choos-ing
classes and tracking academ-ic
progress easier, the Office of
Academic Records and Registrar
has unveiled the STARS Interactive
Audit Report, an alternative to the
STARS Report.
The new report uses graphs and
charts to illustrate data — features
that allow students to explore al-ternative
majors and view three-dimensional
graphic depictions of
their course histories.
The system also includes Course
Cart, an eBay-like approach to
choosing classes for future semes-ters.
“Students can literally shop for
classes,” USC Associate Registrar
Matt Bemis said. “The real bang
New OASIS
introduces
visual features
System update makes student
academic records easier to
read with visual elements.
| see oasis, page 13 |
By Jennifer smith
Daily Trojan
A man was arrested Wednesday in connection with
the fatal stabbing of USC student Bryan Richard Frost,
Department of Public Safety officials said.
Travion Terrett Ford, 24, was arrested at 3:00 p.m.
Wednesday and was booked on suspicion of murder at
7:42 p.m., said Officer Karen Smith of LAPD media re-lations.
Ford, a Los Angeles resident, does not live in the
North University Park area, DPS officials said. Ford is
being held at the LAPD administrative headquarters
in Downtown Los Angeles without bail. He is await-ing
arraignment.
Police have also obtained the knife they believe was
used in the killing, said Andrew J. Smith, an LAPD
commander.
Police said they are also questioning a woman who
was present at the scene of the crime, but would not
say if there is any relationship between the man and
woman. Contrary to prior reports, police said they now
believe the woman lives in the North University Park
area.
Frost was stabbed Thursday, Sept. 18, when a verbal
argument with a man outside an apartment complex
near 28th Street and Orchard Avenue led to a physical
altercation. Frost, 23, who was a student in the School
of Cinematic Arts, was transported to California
Hospital Medical Center, where he was pronounced
dead.
Police later obtained a search warrant for an apart-ment
in the complex. DPS officials said Ford does not
live at that residence.
Undergraduate Student Government sponsored
an emergency town hall meeting on safety in Bovard
Man has not been charged; police confirm he is
an L.A. resident, but doesn’t live near campus.
Jonathan Wong | Daily Trojan
Squeezed · USC students and administrators said they would welcome
a watchdog group’s proposed changes to the financial aid system.
Joshua Sy | Daily Trojan
Town hall · DPS Chief Carey Drayton sits on a panel, which includes city and university law enforcement officials, as well as
university administrators, to talk to students about plans to heighten security in the University Park Campus area.
| see arrest, page 3 |