FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 16, 2018 | STUDENT NEWSPAPER OF THE UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA SINCE 1912 | VOL. 193, NO. 27 DAILY TROJAN Sophomore
guard Derryck
Thornton and
the men’s
basketball team
beat Oregon
72-70 Thursday.
PAGE 08
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Photo from USC website
Soto Street settlement · The Department of Toxic Substances Control alleged that USC transported
and stored hazardous waste at its Soto Street Building in Los Angeles, which holds administrative offices.
By KARAN NEVATIA
News Editor
USC reached an $89,142 set-tlement
with the California
Department of Toxic Substances
Control for alleged violations of
the California Health and Safety
Code involving unauthorized
transport and storage of hazard-ous
waste, DTSC said in a press
release Wednesday.
According to settlement doc-uments,
between 2013 and 2015,
USC allegedly shipped 7.5 tons of
hazardous waste including the
harmful chemicals toluene, hy-drochloric
acid and chloroform
to its Soto Street Building in Los
Angeles. The building, which
houses USC administrative offices
and the Health Sciences Campus
fitness center, wasn’t authorized
as a waste storage facility. The
settlement also alleges that USC
failed to prepare a manifest to in-form
the DTSC of the waste trans-portation.
USC reached the settlement
with DTSC in mid-December last
year. Of the $89,142, $47,142 was
paid out to the DTSC, and $42,000
was given to ‘supplemental envi-ronmental
projects,’ the settle-ment
documents say, through a
DTSC program that encourag-es
using settlement cases to fund
programs to improve California
environmental health.
The payments include a $35,000
payment to the Coalition for
Clean Air, which will use the mon-ey
to install community-based
air quality monitoring devices in
the Wilmington-San Pedro region
of Los Angeles, according to the
DTSC news release.
“We expect to add 50 to 100
new monitors that will collect
data about the levels of health
destroying particulate matter
emitted from trucks, refineries
and rail yards, particularly along
the Alameda Corridor,” Victor
Polanco, a CCA project manag-er,
said in an email to the Daily
Trojan.
Furthermore, USC is making
a $7,000 payment to Nurturing
Students with Nature to aid its
goal of providing environmental
education to urban Los Angeles
students, through experiences in
nature spaces throughout the re-gion.
“DTSC continues to hold vio-lators
accountable and protect
public health, and at the same
time promote projects that ben-efit
communities most burdened
by pollution,” DTSC Director
Barbara Lee said in statement
emailed to the Daily Trojan. “The
Department appreciates that
USC agreed to fund two projects
that will help improve the lives
and health outcomes of some of
USC pays over $80,000 in hazardous waste settlement
Part of the money will fund
environmental health projects
throughout Los Angeles.
| see WASTE, page 2 |
Emily Smith | Daily Trojan
A diverse voice · Anna Deavere Smith, an actress, writer and professor, spoke about her upcoming fi lm
Notes from the Field, about the school-to-prison pipeline problem in the United States on Thursday.
By JOCELYN WOODS
Staff Writer
Students and faculty members
fi lled the Wallis Annenberg Hall
on Thursday to see actress and
writer Anna Deavere Smith speak
in the third installment of USC
Annenberg-HBO Diverse Voices
Forum series. The event was mod-erated
by Director of the School
of Communication Sarah Banet-
Weiser.
Smith, known widely for her play
Twilight: Los Angeles, 1992, spoke
about her upcoming fi lm Notes
from the Field, which will premiere
Feb. 24 on HBO.
In Notes from the Field, which
has been adapted from the stage to
the screen, Smith said she depicted
the personal accounts of students,
parents, teachers and administra-tors
caught in America’s school-to-
prison pipeline, the dispropor-tionate
tendency of disadvantaged
students end up going from school
to prison.
In 2011, Smith was introduced to
the concept of the school-to-prison
pipeline and recounted the story of
a Baltimore child who peed in a wa-tercooler
and was taken to jail.
“That really blew my mind!”
Smith said. “I couldn’t believe
something like that could happen
in my hometown. That was when I
realized that rich kids, even middle
class kids, get the opportunity [to
be] mischievous while poor kids are
met with a path to prison.”
Smith said that this story
served as the catalyst for both
her play and Notes from the Field .
Drawn from over 250 interviews of
people living and working within
a challenged system, she said she
decided to elucidate a lost gener-ation
of American youth through
her stimulating portrayal of 18
characters. In them, she hopes to
inspire awareness and change.
As an actress that Banet-Weiser
said “brings souls to life,” Smith
noted that history builds a con-text
in which people won’t pursue
a better future.
“The knowledge of history is
the opposite of hopelessness,”
Smith said. “I want the people
that watch this to be inspired to
act on it.”
Wyatt Vinchi, a senior major-ing
in theatre, said he was empow-ered
by Smith’s work.
“She has no fears when she is
conveying her truth, and especial-ly
during our political climate, we
need strong voices,” Vinchi said.
“She is one of my invisible men-tors.
This was incredible.”
HBO’s Anna Deavere Smith
speaks on ‘Notes from the Field’
The actress and playwright
talked about her upcoming
fi lm adaptation on Thursday.