Student Newspaper of the University of Southern California Since 1912 | www.dailytrojan.com | VOL. 165, NO. 35 | Tuesday October 14, 2008
InDEX
4 · Opinion
5 · Lifestyle
8 · Classifieds
10 · Crossword
10 · Cryptogram
12 · Sports
Queen Diva: Mixed
reviews for Madonna’s
11th album. PAGE 5
Retooling: USC’s offense
makes adjustments for
Saturday’s game. PAGE 12
By Alexandra Tilsley
Daily Trojan
A group of Trojan alumni who
founded the university’s student ra-dio
station KSCR in 1975 has cre-ated
an endowment to raise money
for the station after its funding was
cut by nearly 50 percent last year.
The endowment aims to raise $1
million by 2010, marking KSCR’s
35th anniversary.
“It was certainly [a goal] that we
thought we could reach and be at-tainable,
one that we thought the
donor would feel was in a range that
was doable,” said Bob Moore, co-founder
and first general manager
KSCR.
Undergraduate Student
Government cut KSCR’s funding
by nearly 50 percent last April and
redistributed the funds among a
group of other student organiza-tions.
When the cut was announced,
founding members including
Moore, Julie Fosgate, Rosemary
O’Brien and Ron Redmond decided
to help KSCR stay afloat.
O’Brien had the idea to create
the endowment, now called KSCR
Friends, after several brainstorm-ing
sessions with USC administra-tors.
When she proposed the idea to
her co-founders, she said, the proj-ect
took off.
“One thing led to another,”
Moore said. “We all e-mailed back
and forth to decide what we could
do to help, and it seemed that the
logical thing to do was to start an
endowment.”
KSCR Friends officially kicks off
its fundraising campaign Nov. 1 to
coincide with Homecoming Week.
KSCR alumni will be on campus at
a KSCR booth throughout the week
and there will be opportunities for
supporters to make donations.
The endowment drive comes
just as KSCR is looking at some
big changes. In 2010, because of
Founders start endowment
for cash-strapped KSCR
After the station’s funding was
cut by half, a group of alumni
set a goal to raise $1 million.
| see KSCR, page 2 |
By Rohan
venkataramakrishnan
Daily Trojan
Neuroscientists at the USC
Brain and Creativity Institute
have released a study that iden-tifies
two distinct brain regions
with competing responses to risk
that researchers say could ex-plain
why some people are more
likely than others to take risks.
Zhong-Lin Lu, professor of
psychology and co-author of the
study, said the research is one of
the first that actively points out
how the brain treats risk and ac-curately
determines where this
process takes place.
“We can see risk as a battle be-tween
two forces,” said Antoine
Bechara, professor of psychology
at USC, in a press release. “There
is always a lure of reward. There’s
always a fear of failure. These are
the two forces that are always
battling each other.”
Subjects were given a famil-iar
gambling task to measure
their response to risk, while the
researchers observed their reac-tions
with functional magnetic
resource imaging. The function-al
magnetic resonance imaging
revealed more activity in one re-gion
for risk-averse volunteers,
with greater activity in the oth-er
region for those willing to take
risks.
“Human decision-making isn’t
entirely rational,” Lu said. “It
seems like people often inject
emotion into the way they treat
risk. ... This research shows that
how often you take risks can be
determined by [a] simple equa-tion.”
While the research pinpoints
how the brain treats risk and
where this process takes place, it
does not address why some peo-ple
might be more willing to take
risks.
“That is the enormous, deeper
question,” Bechara said. “We are
already following up the study
with other projects and we also
have plans to do more to under-stand
the ‘why.’”
First author Gui Xue, a post-doctoral
research associate at
USC, put forward a few possible
reasons.
“Different people could have
different brain structures, so
maybe that particular part of the
brain has more volume for those
who take risks,” he said. “It could
be genetic or epigenetic, or even
both, we don’t really know. But
we have more data and we’re do-ing
the research, so we will find
out.”
Researchers discover brain
link between risk, reward
Scientists find more activity
in particular part of brain for
those more likely to take risks.
| see brain, page 2 |
By Callie Schweitzer
Daily Trojan
At 3:15 p.m. on a sunny Thursday, it’s hard to
imagine a group of third and fourth graders
who want to be inside.
But at the St. Agnes Parish School, at the corner
of Vermont Avenue and Adams Boulevard, 13 stu-dents
work to transform a classroom into a stage fit for
dancers.
When USC freshmen Pany Faed and Emma Stokes-
Raab finally walk through the classroom door to teach
an hour of dance instruction, they’re treated like
queens — after just one week of class.
“The best part is working with the kids,” said Faed,
who is majoring in political science. “They are so en-thusiastic
and always so ready to learn. ... I love work-ing
with them and getting to show them a little bit of
something that means a lot to me.”
Bringing dance into the classroom and the lives of
local school children is exactly what Dance Included,
a dance program taught by USC students at public
schools in the USC area, has strived to do since it be-gan
in 2003.
In 2004, the program had eight volunteer instruc-tors
and reached approximately 160 students. This
year, the program has 21 instructors and is reaching
between 200 and 315 students, said Tu-Oanh Phan,
president of Dance Included and a junior majoring in
international relations global business and communi-cation.
The instructor volunteers teach weekly, tuition-free
dance classes at seven schools in the area surrounding
USC’s campus. This year, they are also teaching a class
at the Exposition Park Intergenerational Community
Center, a recreational center near the Coliseum.
Dance Included began offering after-school classes
in 2003, but later expanded to teach classes during the
school day after receiving requests from elementary
school teachers.
The program now offers ballet, jazz, hip-hop and
salsa classes, which usually have between 15 to 20 stu-dents.
This year, they introduced a pom class, which is
a mix between cheerleading and dance.
In Faed and Stokes-Raab’s hip-hop class, there is
already a sense of camaraderie and trust among the
children.
The seven girls dance around, mouthing every word
of Ciara’s “One, Two Step” as the six boys in the class
snicker and look at one another when they are told by
Faed to “look cute.”
The room is filled with laughter and glee coming
from two rounds of freeze dance.
In Faed and Stokes-Raab’s class, it’s about much
more than dancing.
“It gives the students an outlet to express
| see dance, page 3 |
The dancing queens (and kings)
For a group of nearly two dozen USC students, Dance
Included is a way to share their passion with local students.
Twenty-one USC students volunteer to teach dance classes at seven elementary schools near campus.
21
Days Until
Election
COUNTDOWN
Gary Fung | Daily Trojan
Antoine Bechara
Photo courtesy of Tu-Oanh Phan