Student Newspaper of the University of Southern California Since 1912 | www.dailytrojan.com | VOL. 172, NO. 7 | Friday January 21, 2011
InDEX 2 · News Digest 4 · Opinion 5 · Lifestyle 8 · Classifieds 10 · Sudoku 12 · Sports
By Dara Weinraub
Daily Trojan
Through a new partnership, a group of USC students
will be conducting research that will help voters form de-cisions
about the potential candidates in the 2012 presi-dential
election.
USC undergraduate students will act on behalf of
Project Vote Smart, a non-profit, non-partisan voter edu-cation
organization, providing information to the public
about political candidates.
Project Vote Smart, which has organized similar in-ternships
with students at Oregon State University and
the University of Arizona, has chosen to bring its intern-ship
program to USC and the Jesse M. Unruh Institute of
Politics because they see room for growth, according to
Kate McElroy, the director of the Political Courage Test
for Project Vote Smart.
“USC and the Unruh institute are enthusiastic about
what we’re doing,” McElroy said. “There’s this combina-tion
of all these young, brilliant minds and something
is going to come up that will completely change how we
look at things.”
Last spring, Project Vote Smart administrators visited
USC along with other universities to find a new location
for their project.
Dan Schnur, the director of the Unruh Institute, said
Project Vote Smart decided to hold the program at USC
because of the enthusiastic students.
“A lot of our students do typical political internships
like working in governors’ offices,” Schnur said. “But
Project Vote
Smart comes
to campus
Students in POSC 395 will be researching
political candidates for Project Vote Smart.
| see politics, page 3 |
By kira brekke
Daily Trojan
Bicyclists aren’t the only ones
facing increased restrictions on
campus roads.
At the same time as the
Department of Public Safety is
planning to deploy more electric
carts, the university is working to
enforce rules to help decrease traf-fic
decongestion.
The Environmental Health and
Safety department of Career and
Protective Services is currently
working to create a safety program
to train people in the proper use of
electric vehicles, and Ed Becker, ex-ecutive
director of Environmental
Health & Safety, said preliminary
measures are being taken to draft
an on-campus safety policy that
will attempt to educate and spread
awareness about the rules of oper-ating
an electric vehicle.
“It’s something that is already
happening, and what we need to
do is adapt the rules to make sure
that we can control the growth
in carts. It’s [about] controlling
access and controlling the number
of vehicles,” Becker said.
Becker said there need to be
ways to ensure that electric cart
drivers obey the rules of the road
and to discourage the idea that
drivers can behave differently just
because they are on campus.
“Electric vehicles [are] a conve-nient
way to get around but in or-der
to have them coexist with all
the other forms of transportation
on campus, we have to have a clear
set of rules and people following
rules,” Becker said.
Another concern being ad-dressed
is how to prevent unreg-istered
carts from coming onto
campus, which has the potential
to cause unwanted congestion or
danger to those on campus.
Mandating that all the vehicles
have some sort of USC registration
will discourage these unregistered
vehicles on campus because driv-ers
will be able to be identified and
found if need be, Becker said.
“The first step is having [the ve-hicles]
first registered through a
department, Becker said. “Not all
of them are registered now, but by
the end of the year, we’re hoping to
have a full inventory.”
DPS Capt. David Carlisle said
University will regulate electric carts on campus
The Environmental Health
and Safety Department wants
to decrease traffic on campus.
| see carts, page 3 |
By lily conover
Daily Trojan
First Lady Michelle Obama
encouraged college students to
take advantage of opportunities
to study abroad in China during
a speech in Washington, D.C. on
Wednesday.
The speech, delivered in front
of more than 1,000 students,
was in support of the president’s
“100,000 Strong” Initiative, a
plan Obama announced during
his 2009 China visit that is a na-tional
effort to greatly increase
the number and diversity of
Americans who are able to study
in China through the promotion
of programs and scholarships.
In her speech, the First Lady
emphasized the importance of
pursuing study opportunities
First Lady
urges study
in China
Michelle Obama encourages
study abroad to enhance
international relations.
| see China, page 3 |
Carlo Acenas | Daily Trojan
It’s electric · The first step to decongesting the traffic on campus is to
have all vehicles register through their departments by the end of the year.
Synthetic princes: Tesla
Boy electrifies Europe.
PAGE 5
Roadtrip: Men’s volleyball
continues road swing in San Diego.
PAGE 12
Winter wonderland
Freshmen Carly Shelar, undeclared, and Hannah Yelton, an industrial systems engineering major, enjoy ice skating
in McCarthy Quad, where Program Board’s Special Events Committee set up a “Winter Wonderland” skating rink
Thursday afternoon. The 45-person synthetic skating rink came complete with special skates to allow students to
skate on the plastic surface, as well as fog and snow machines. Still, the warm weather seemed to throw students
off. “They should hand out free lemonade and sunscreen [instead of hot chocolate],” said Annie Lee, a freshman
majoring in biomedical engineering.
Jennifer Schultz | Daily Trojan