Student newSpaper of the univerSity of Southern California SinCe 1912 | www.dailytrojan.com | vol. 178, no. 58 | Friday april 19, 2013
InDEX 4 · Opinion 5 · Lifestyle 8 · Classifieds 9 · Crossword 10 · Sudoku 12 · Sports
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Season champs: women’s
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CampuS
By rachel Bracker and
reBecca dancer
daily trojan
Students, staff and alumni in
support of El Centro Chicano
stood in front of Tommy Trojan at
noon on Thursday to protest the
university’s decision to relocate
the center to the Student Union.
About 40 protestors with signs
reading “We belong here” and “No
taxation without representation”
shouted “Si se puede” and “Fight
on” at the protest. Student
speakers said that they were
speaking on behalf of the students
who used El Centro and that the
university’s impending decision
to move El Centro did not take
student voices into account.
The El Centro Ambassadors, a
united group of students against
the proposed relocation of El
Centro, started a petition on April
3 that objected to the university’s
decision to relocate the center
from the United University
Church, where it has been for 33 of
its 40 years, to the Student Union,
where other cultural centers
student organizations currently
are located.
Protesters voiced complaints
detailed in the petition, a chief
criticism being that the proposed
space to move El Centro is half
the space in the United University
Church.
El Centro Director William N.
Vela, who observed the protest
from several yards away, said he
estimates that between 200 and
400 students pass through El
Centro each week.
“What we’ve started in the last
El Centro Chicano
protests continue
The El Centro Ambassadors’
petition against the relocation
received over 800 signatures.
| see ProtEst, page 3 |
rachel Bracker | Daily Trojan
“We belong here” · Edgar Aguilar, a senior majoring in theatre,
protests the relocation of El Centro Thursday near Tommy Trojan.
aCademiCS
By noah zucker
daily trojan
Electronic music has invaded the
mainstream music charts and USC appears
to have taken note.
The Thornton School of Music will offer
a new course, “Electronic Dance Music”
(MUSC 499) in the fall. The course will
present a comprehensive look at the history
and development of the electronic music
genre.
Thornton School of Music Dean Robert
Cutietta said the new course reflects
Thornton’s ability to respond to rapidly
evolving music trends.
“We are constantly reevaluating our
classes to keep up with the times,” Cutietta
said in a statement to the Daily Trojan. “I
am very excited to be part of a music school
that is so nimble and quick to adapt to the
times and reinvent itself in response to
changes in our art form.”
Cutietta said he hopes the course, which
will be offered to all students including non-music
majors, will attract students from
other schools of the university to Thornton.
“We take very seriously our mission to
provide relevant and meaningful musical
experiences to the USC students who are
not music majors,” Cutietta said.
In 2009, Thornton introduced the
Popular Music degree program. After
having success in that program, Thornton
decided to introduce additional popular
music classes.
“In concert with [the Popular Music
program], we are trying to expand our
offerings to [non-music majors] who are
also interested in studying the cultural and
historical aspects of popular music,” said
Joanna Demers, the chair of Thornton’s
musicology department.
Demers said the course will take a
chronological approach in examining EDM.
“Each week we will present a different
focus,” Demers said. “We’ll be starting
off with the history of German electronic
music, and then we’ll make our way into the
‘70s with groups like Kraftwerk, and then
look at disco and other dance music genres.”
Along with reading assignments,
students will be assigned frequent listening
assignments. Reflecting the multifaceted
nature of EDM, the course will also focus
on the visual aspects of EDM.
“It’s a very easy time to teach this
because so much of the material is available
on YouTube,” Demers said. “I don’t think
this sort of course would have been possible
five years ago just because there wasn’t
nearly the video documentation available
then that we have today at our fingertips.
It’s really going to be a very multimedia
experience.”
Demers also said the course offering will
be unique for a music school of Thornton’s
stature.
“I think this type of course is
revolutionary and original,” Demers said.
“It takes some of the same questions that
have been asked about hip-hop and rock
‘n’ roll music and are now being applied to
electronic dance music.”
The course in electronic dance music
will be taught by Sean Nye, who completed
a dissertation on electronic music at the
University of Minnesota and will be coming
to USC after winning a highly competitive
Thornton school to offer new
electronic dance music course
The new electronic dance music course
will examine the historical, visual and
technological aspects of the genre.
| see musIc, page 3 |
univerSity
By reBecca dancer
daily trojan
The School of Cinematic Arts
announced this week that it will
collaborate with the Beijing Film
Academy to establish a joint
program set to begin this June.
The China-U.S. International
Master Classes and Industry
Summits in Cinematic Arts aims
to foster cultural and industrial
exchanges between American
and Chinese film industries,
according to a statement made
by Naga Film, one of the projects’
SCA joins
partnership
with Beijing
The university’s collaboration
with the Beijing Film
Academy will begin in June.
| see fIlm, page 2 |
design by christina ellis
For more coverage, see page 5.