Student Newspaper of the University of Southern California Since 1912 | www.dailytrojan.com | VOL. 169, NO. 30 | Friday February 26, 2010
InDEX
2 · News Digest
4 · Opinion
5 · Lifestyle
8 · Classifieds
11 · Sudoku
12 · Sports
Puppeteers: West Hollywood
show flaunts its performers’
penile prowess. PAGE 5
Back outside: The USC track and
field team makes its outdoor season
debut in Claremont, Calif. PAGE 12
Hide Kurokawa | Daily Trojan
Speak out · Najee Ritter, a sophomore majoring in theatre, served as the spokesperson for members of the Black Student
Assembly as they protested the “Compton Cookout” and UCSD’s handling of the incident near Tommy Trojan on Thursday.
By christianna kyriacou
Daily Trojan
Students from the USC Save Our Selves Coalition
and other groups within the Black Student Assembly
held a silent protest Thursday in response to
what they feel were racist incidents at UC San
Diego.
Members of SOS — an organization that holds fo-rums
to discuss issues facing the black communi-ty
— demonstrated by Tommy Trojan on Thursday,
protesting a UCSD fraternity-organized party called
“Compton Cookout.”
Held during Black History Month, the “Compton
Cookout” was a “ghetto-themed” party that encour-aged
attendees to come dressed for “life in the ghet-to.”
A Facebook invitation specifically said that
women should come dressed as “ghetto chicks“ who
“usually have gold teeth, start fights and drama, and
wear cheap clothes.”
Many have said the event was a clear example of
perpetuating offensive racial stereotypes, and the
USC demonstrators said they thought it dehuman-ized
their race. Members of SOS were also dissatis-fied
with the university’s response.
“The acts of hatred that were targeted specifical-ly
last week toward African-Americans actually have
been an ongoing event on UCSD’s campus, and the
administration does not support the students there,”
USC students
protest UCSD
party, response
Students say the “Compton Cookout,” a themed
party at UCSD, was racist and insensitive.
| see protest, page 3 |
By stephen Zelezny
Daily Trojan
USC will host the West Coast
Campus Pride College Prep Day &
Fair for lesbian, gay, bisexual and
transgender high school students on
Saturday, hoping to help the students
find a school that suits them and to
showcase USC’s LGBT community.
Campus Pride, a non-profit organi-zation
that works with LGBT-friendly
campuses throughout the coun-try,
is partnering with USC’s LGBT
Resource Center to host the annual
event.
The fair, which began at UC San
Diego three years ago, allows high
school students and parents to in-teract
with colleges from across the
country.
“We work with LGBT colleges
across the nation in order to build
future leaders and to build safer and
friendlier universities,” said Shane
Windmeyer, executive director of
Campus Pride. “The fair program has
taken off.”
The USC LGBT Resource Center
approached Windmeyer this year
USC to host
LGBT Pride
and Prep Day
Event will bring high school
students to campus to network
with LGBT-friendly colleges.
| see Pride, page 3 |
By liz warden
Daily Trojan
Students and community mem-bers
can now dig up some dirt and
contribute to the sustainability ef-fort
with a new community garden
in the North University Park.
The 350-square-foot garden
opened Thursday and is located at
3015 Shrine Place. It hopes to be a
joint effort between the school and
local residents and aims to help
feed the hungry.
Student and staff volunteers,
working closely with Sustainability
Director Matthew Oden and the
non-profit organization Urban
Farming, manually dumped and
raked soil Thursday, marking the
first day of work on the garden.
Oden said the idea of a communi-ty
garden has been in the works for
a long time, but the impetus came
when Urban Farming contacted the
school, interested in starting an or-ganic
garden in unused space.
“It just happened to align when
we were starting to think about a
garden project,” Oden said.
Oden worked with John Baldo,
the Undergraduate Student
Government’s director of univer-sity
outreach, to involve student
groups, including Environment
First and the California Public
Interest Research Group. The stu-dents
researched possibilities and
ultimately came to an agreement
with Urban Farming to start the
project in the USC area.
Oden worked with the USC
Real Estate & Asset Management
Department to see which USC-owned
properties around cam-pus
would be suitable for the proj-ect.
They identified the property on
Shrine Place as an area with a large
enough yard for the garden.
3015 Shrine Place is owned
by USC and is leased by the
Department of Public Safety. The
building is currently used as head-quarters
for the Contemporary
Services Corporation guards, the
security guards in yellow jackets
that man various locations around
campus.
USC Facilities Management
Services gave Oden and his crew
the tools needed to start the gar-den,
such as shovels, wheelbarrows
and cinderblocks to border the
walls of the garden.
So far, Urban Farming has sup-plied
all the necessary seeds and
soil and has also contributed tools
and volunteers.
Meg Glasser, West Coast region-al
manager for Urban Farming, will
visit the garden every week in the
upcoming months to oversee the
project and teach USC and commu-nity
volunteers how to keep the gar-den
going.
Much of the student interest
right now is from the few student
organizations that have already
been volunteering, Baldo said. But
USC launches community garden on Shrine Place
Director of Sustainability
hopes garden will eventually
provide food for the hungry.
| see garden, page 3 |
Sunil Murali | Daily Trojan
Breaking ground · Brian Rodysill, a sophomore, works on the
border of the new community garden, located at 3015 Shrine Place.