STUDENT NEWSPAPER OF THE UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA SINCE 1912 | WWW.DAILYTROJAN.COM | VOL. 168, NO. 60 | WEDNESDAY NOVEMBER 18, 2009
INDEX
2 · News Digest
3 · Sudoku
4 · Opinion
5 · Lifestyle
8 · Classified
12 · Sports
Talk back: Join experts in Doheny 240
to discuss what’s ahead for health-care
reform. Lunch will be served at 11:30.
Opening delight: USC wins its
season opener 77-67 over UC
Riverside at home. PAGE 12
By JOHN ISOM
Daily Trojan
Despite an early start time and a crushing defeat
for USC, the Homecoming game against Stanford on
Saturday brought in more sales to the USC Pertusati
bookstore than expected, though not as much as last
year.
The bookstore made about $300,000 on
Homecoming day, and approximately $550,000 over
the entire weekend.
In previous years, the bookstore averaged about
$1,000 in sales per minute during peak Homecoming
hours; this year, sales topped out at $930 per min-ute.
Daniel Archer, director of the bookstore, said part
of the reason for the decline in sales might have been
the early kickoff. A 12:30 start, he said, meant cus-tomers
didn’t have much time to purchase merchan-dise
beforehand.
But more customers than usual purchased book-store
merchandise after the game, which Archer at-tributed
to the unfortunate results.
“Sadly, it’s ironic ... So many people left the game
and our store was really busy,” Archer said. “It’s al-most
like retail therapy.”
Archer said once “disenchanted fans” left the
Coliseum, they needed to do something else to dis-tract
themselves and found shopping at the bookstore
a good option.
Archer said this accounted for the unusually strong
sales during the second half of the day — that is, about
$50,000 in sales from 3 p.m. to 6 p.m.
Though sales were still down from last year’s
Homecoming, Archer said sales were actually higher
than anticipated, which he partially attributed to the
recovering economy.
Overall, Archer was pleased with the results of
bookstore sales, saying they were “very comparable to
... last year,” and that it was a successful Homecoming
weekend for the bookstore.
Homecoming
bookstore
sales down
Though down from last year, sales were higher
than officials expected given the early game time.
By KATE MASON
Daily Trojan
The Department of Public Safety and
LAPD will be conducting a second bike
traffic enforcement effort today, de-spite
sentiment from many students that
the first crackdown was ineffective and
unfair.
The crackdown on bike traffic will
focus on the intersections on Jefferson
Boulevard at Hoover Street and at
McClintock Avenue. It will mirror the en-forcement
effort on Sept. 18, when LAPD
gave out about 120 traffic citations, ac-cording
to DPS Assistant Chief John
Thomas.
Since then, Thomas said, LAPD officers
have sporadically come to campus and
ticketed students, but Wednesday’s en-forcement
will be the first concentrated
effort since September. Still, Thomas
said he hopes the periodic citations have
helped decrease the number of offenders.
“We’re expecting them to write fewer
tickets this time, meaning the behavior is
changing and students are at least more
mindful,” Thomas said. “If we write more
of the same number we’re not having the
impact we need to see.”
Despite Thomas’ optimism, many
students said they have not noticed a
LAPD to crack down on traffic laws, again
Students say occasional ticketing
sprees are ineffective, but DPS and
LAPD believe they are helping.
| see BIKES, page 3 |
Nathaniel Gonzalez | Daily Trojan
Ticket to ride · An LAPD officer issues a traffic citation to at student by the intersection of McClintock Avenue and Jefferson
Boulevard during LAPD’s Sept. 18 traffic enforcement crackdown. LAPD will again be ticketing in droves on Wednesday.
By KATE MATHER
Daily Trojan
While fans cheered on the USC bas-ketball
team Tuesday night at the Galen
Center, across the street, players stole the
spotlight on a different set of courts.
The courts there are a little more din-gy,
with tattered nets and a thin layer of
sand covering the cement. There is no
scoreboard and no announcer, and players
compete under the yellow wash of lights
mounted on the adjoining parking garage.
But even though these courts aren’t
nearly as ornate or well-kept as the Galen
Center — or even the courts in the Lyon
Center, for that matter — the games they
host might be more important for USC’s
image than those in either of the other ven-ues.
The two basketball courts located on the
edge of campus — nestled between Gate 3,
Figueroa Street and Parking Structure X
— have become a mecca of sorts for bas-ketball
enthusiasts over the years. Though
the courts are close to the freshmen dorms
and sometimes attract USC students, a dif-ferent
crowd comes out to play at night:
people who live in the neighborhood.
“You get a good workout up here,” said
19-year-old Wayne McIntyre, who lives
near campus. “I come here because I [see]
the homies and I like playing basketball.”
McIntyre and his friends play basketball
on the courts regularly — he said he comes
to campus “every other day.” There’s always
someone on the courts in the evenings, he
said, especially on the weekends.
“There’s always competition,” he said.
But competition marks every basketball
court. What sets these courts apart, play-ers
said, is that here — unlike elsewhere
in South Los Angeles — the competition
doesn’t get out of hand.
“Elsewhere people are getting mad reg-ularly,”
said Clifford Warrn, a 20-year-old
who plays on the USC courts daily. “Not so
much here. There’s really no arguing — no-body’s
causing trouble.”
“You can’t say the same thing about oth-er
courts,” McIntyre said.
There’s something else uncommon about
the outdoor courts: Although they are on
campus and near many freshmen dorms,
they are usually vacant during the day. They
don’t come alive until 6 or 7 p.m., when the
lights on the parking garage f licker on and
Competition at campus basketball courts draws local residents, students
Nestled between freshmen dorms, the
courts usually come alive at night.
| see BASKETBALL, page 3 |
Carlo Acenas | Daily Trojan
Hoops · Local residents frequently play basketball at the courts across from the Galen
Center. The courts are used almost every night, but often remain vacant during the day.