Student Newspaper of the University of Southern California Since 1912 | www.dailytrojan.com | VOL. 165, NO. 53 | Friday November 7, 2008
InDEX
2 · News Digest
4 · Opinion
5 · Sports
12 · Classifieds
13 · Crossword
16 · Lifestyle
Power Play: Student play
explores British history.
PAGE 16
Golden Opportunity: USC plays
first ranked team in a month.
PAGE 5
By TOREY VAN OOT
Daily Trojan
LAPD gang detectives are continuing to search for sus-pects
in connection to a drive-by shooting that imperiled
the career of one of USC’s up-and-coming track stars.
Freshman Bryshon Nellum, 19, was shot multiple times
in the thigh and hamstring at about 2 a.m. on Oct. 31 after
leaving a Halloween party at Leonardo’s Night Club.
Nellum and a group of partygoers had left the Vermont
Avenue club and were walking westbound on 29th Street
toward their cars when several suspects opened fire into
the crowd.
LAPD Southwest Division Gang Unit Officer G.
Espinoza said police are now looking for a gray older-model
lowrider vehicle, possibly a Chevy Monte Carlo or
Oldsmobile Cutless, with chrome rims, in connection with
the shooting.
Police said they are not sure whether the shooter was in
the car or on foot at the time of the incident, but they be-lieve
the car continued westbound on 29th Street.
Nellum has been released and is in stable condition
His doctor said he is making positive progress and
could begin training in as soon as three months. It is un-clear,
however, how the injuries will affect his career. The
freshman, one of the highest-ranked sprinters in the coun-try,
was one of the top recruits this year for the USC Track
and Field program.
The nature of the injuries, all sustained in the legs, ini-tially
raised questions over whether Nellum was target-ed,
but police say they believe the shooting was random.
Detectives said most victims of drive-by shootings are
hit in the lower torso or legs because of the inacurracy
of quickly fired shots and movements in the crowd once
shots are fired.
“Any other victim of drive-by shootings [with these in-juries],
we would say is really lucky, but with him, it’s his
Police look for
shooter in
Nellum case
Detectives are seeking a gray lowrider car with
chrome rims in connection with drive-by shooting.
| see nellum, page 3 |
Photo courtesy of Jon Nalick
Be patient · The new LAC+USC Hospital, which begins treating patients Friday, makes many technological improvements to
its facilities, but the new building is considerably smaller than the old one and contains fewer beds for patients.
By holly villamagna
Daily Trojan
After more than a decade of construction
and an unexpected two-week delay, the new
Los Angeles County-USC Hospital opens its
doors Friday to hundreds of new and existing
patients.
Though the hospital’s outpatient clinics
opened in September, emergency and surgi-cal
cases continued to be treated at the orig-inal
Depression-era building that has been
critical in the treatment of Los Angeles’ mi-nority
and undeserved population for de-cades.
On Friday, the new hospital, which is lo-cated
next door to the old one, began accept-ing
all patients, including those in need of
surgery and emergency care.
The move to the new facilities was orig-inally
scheduled for Oct. 17 and 18, but the
opening ran into a series of delays, said Dr.
Sean Henderson, vice chair of emergency
medicine at the Keck School of Medicine.
He said delays are typical in projects of this
scope.
“There are unrealistic expectations of
how quickly you can build a complicated
After two-week delay, LAC+USC opens doors
The hospital, which opens Friday,
touts up-to-date technology, but will
offer fewer beds to patients.
| see hospital, page 3 |
By taren fujimoto
Daily Trojan
Inspired by its upcoming pro-duction
of Richard Wagner’s op-era
“Der Ring des Nibelungen,”
or “The Ring of the Nibelung,”
the Los Angeles Opera is work-ing
with more than 50 Southern
Californian arts and educational
institutions, including USC, to
stage Ring Festival L.A., the first
significant citywide cultural fes-tival
since the 1984 Olympic Arts
Festival.
L.A. Opera board member and
festival director Barry Sanders
said the 10-week festival, sched-uled
for April 15 through June
30, 2010, is intended to take
the opera and arts out of the
gilded halls to touch people’s
consciousness citywide.
“L.A. is a city defined by spe-cial
things happening here that
bring us together,” Sanders said.
“This will be one more impor-tant
occurrence that everyone
will know of. We want everyone
to sense that there’s a party go-ing
on.”
Sanders said the festival will
be very important in building
a sense of community in Los
Angeles.
“We want everyone to feel that
were all in this community to-gether,”
he said. “We’re collabo-rating,
tearing down the walls,
and that’s a first. Once you do
these things, they get to be a
habit.”
Sanders said he hopes USC
students realize the university’s
vital role in the festival, which
will include sponsorship as well
as special events with Thornton
School of Music and KUSC 91.5
FM.
“USC is going to play one of the
leading roles,” Sanders said. “We
have a long and fruitful, warm
relationship and this is what you
do when you’re good friends, you
do things together.”
The Thornton school will
present a comic and seldom-performed
Wagner opera, “Das
Liebesverbot,” or “The Ban on
Love,” which Wagner wrote when
he was 21 years old. Thornton will
also sponsor a Visions & Voices
lecture on Wagner’s “Ring” by
L.A. Opera music director James
Conlon.
The USC Brain and Creativity
Institute will present “Brain,
Music and Myth,” a round-table
involving leading neuroscien-tists,
musicians and anthropolo-gists
discussing Wagner’s “Ring”
and its emotional effects on au-diences.
LA Opera plans massive fine arts festival
USC’s Thornton School of
Music and KUSC will play
large roles in the festival.
| see festival, page 3 |
The Trojan Fresh Market was set up in McCarthy Quad on Thursday,
where students could purchase fruit, vegetables, foods and flowers.
Markets up
SPORTS EXTRA PAGE 5
Gregory Ching | Daily Trojan