Tag Archives: University of Southern California

Bonding over complaints about governing body

Nationality: American
Age: 28
Occupation: Graduate Student, Linguist
Residence: Los Angeles, CA
Performance Date: April 9, 2018
Primary Language: English
Language: n/a

“One of the things I learned from the previous club president was all about the body of students and staff that runs all the recreational sports teams on the USC campus called the RCC, and what I learned was that they are terrible and that they don’t do anything right, and that all of our problems can be traced back to them. What I then discovered on my own was that is not quite true, and so what I’ve passed down to other people is that the RCC does a lot of good things for us. However, one of the things is that they don’t quite know how to open doors for us properly. For as long as anybody’s been around they have not come on time to open doors. So, what we have to do is, every time we go to practice, somebody has to go at least 15 minutes early to make a phone call to the people in the Lyon Center and have them come over and open the door for us, and every time they’re surprised. There’s rarely an occasion where they’re like, ‘Oh, yeah. We already knew about that.’ This happens because the staff changes so regularly over there, it seems, but if nobody was sent at 5:45, then nobody would be sent until 6:15 or whenever we called them. We learned to get out our phones and make that call, which meant a conversation every week about how terrible the RCC was and how all of our problems were their fault. It was a team bonding thing weirdly in the end, commiserating over doors. It’s a little odd.”

Background Information and Context:

The interaction between team members about the RCC’s inadequacies happens prior to almost every practice, which occurs three times a week. Usually, it will take place in the halls outside the Physical Education building, outside the South Gym or the basement exercise room that the team reserves for practice. The informant decided to start with this anecdote when he was told that he could freely speak about his experience on the SC Ballroom and Latin Dance Team and interesting things that an outsider wouldn’t know about it. The informant has been on the team for multiple years and served as team president for the 2015-2016 and 2016-2017 school years.

Collector’s Notes:

I have stood outside the doors of the PED basement and south gym more times than I can count, engaging in exactly what the informant described, but until we had this conversation, it never crossed my mind that this was a sort of bonding tradition. It makes sense when compared to the way citizens complain about their government. Even though the government is responsible for a lot of good things, we choose to focus on the negatives, and the act of complaining about the same experiences connects us as citizens, uniting us against those who are perceived to be separate from us because they have more power/money/influence/authority and tell us what to do.

Trojan Marching Band Legend

Nationality: Taiwanese
Age: 21
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles, California
Performance Date: 4/1/15
Primary Language: English

Context: My informant and I were sitting and talking in a cafe, and he shared this legend he heard during his time with the Trojan Marching Band with me.

Interview Transcript:

Informant: I’m sure this is public information. I can share this. So the Trojan Marching Band, uh, we had some beef with the Bruins across town. Uh, just a little bit. I think it was during one UCLA/USC game where it was at their stadium. It was the Rose Bowl. We decided… to march our pre-game, which is the show before the actual football game, where we end up in a line, I think it spells either “Trojans” or “USC,” and we had strategically made it so everyone had like a bag of either sand… or of poop, or of some sort. I’m pretty sure it was sand. Um. And so we would march throughout the show, and not like make a big deal out of it. And then once we get into the formation of “USC” or “Trojans,” we would drop, we would drop our bags  in the spot that we’re in. And then we would run off the field. So essentially what happens is you leave like this huge like, spelling of “USC” or “Trojans” on the field, and obviously I’m sure they were reprimanded for it. Um, and that’s the story that we tell. I think it actually happened, but I’m not sure.

Me: Do most people regard it has happening, or is it like, a split opinion?

Informant: I think most people regard it as happening. I think it’s like, on a website somewhere. That it actually happened.

Me: And like, when do you usually tell this story to people?

Information: Um, when do we tell this story? I definitely learned about it on probably, like, a… a trip we were on. Because like, we like to reminisce about the history of the marching band, and we always joke about, there’s this perception that the year before was always better than the current year. And better in the sense that they were always a little like, rowdier, more aggressive, more spirited, and a lot courser than the current year. Each year is discerned as a little more refined, a little more politically correct, um, and that’s something that is looked down upon for reasons I don’t quite understand. Um, but yeah. So obviously, to do that again, I don’t think that would ever happen. Um, so that’s why we revere, and we speak of the legend that is old band.

Me: Do you ever hear differences in the way that it’s told, or the story consistent?

Informant: I think the story’s pretty consistent.

Me: Except for like, the sand versus poop thing?

Informant: Probably yeah.

Me: Have you heard that told both ways?

Informant: I think so! I think part of me is like, I probably read it as sand, on the website, or like heard about it as sand, but like, the whole purpose of the story is to like, elevate how rough and tough they were. So like, elevating it to be like, “Oh, there was poop in the bag.” That’s not… outrageous in the slightest.

Analysis:

This legend is an example of a story told within a specific group of people as a source of group pride and unity. The legend can be referenced as inspiration for future group actions and can be looked upon fondly as an example of a noteworthy accomplishment. It also feeds off of the rivalry between the University of Southern California (USC) and the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). USC’s campus has a strong football culture, and victories over UCLA, both in football and in other matters, are viewed very favorably.

USC Haunted House

Nationality: American
Age: 21
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles
Performance Date: April 10th, 2014
Primary Language: English

Information about the Informant

My informant is a USC undergraduate student majoring in Theatre. He used to have a major in the cinematic arts, and acted in a few student films produced by his fellow students.

Transcript

“So I was filming a student film here on campus a couple years ago. Uh, it was a–I was like–the film never actually got produced but I was a killer. I was like a serial killer or something. With all his–it was real–all like themed killings. It’s all pretty…insane. And, uh. We didn’t have a permit. So we got approached by a DPS officer. And we were all scared we were gonna get like…or the director at least was scared that we were gonna get busted. I didn’t care ’cause, you know, I’m just the actor. I can’t be held accountable for any of this. Uh. And… But she doesn’t say anything, she actually, uh, starts…talking to us and I forget how…this came up. But she starts talking about this house near campus. And uh, this is at night. And apparently this house near campus is haunted. And…because she said that like fellow officers have been in it to like…look at stuff or whatever, and there’ve been voices and moving things, spooky stuff. And uh, she said that apparently a family lived there, and…two–I’m pretty sure it was only two of the members of the family are…actually there as ghosts now. And they’ve been…messing with stuff, and…I think she said–yeah, she said one of them is friendly and the other one’s pretty…spiteful and vindictive. Uh. And so basically it’s not a place you wanna go. And I don’t know where it is. But…it’s around here somewhere.”

Analysis

Finally, a ghost story about USC. According to my informant, he had no real personal reason for remembering this story that the DPS officer told; he remembered it because it was part of the larger story that almost got their filming crew “busted.” But for me, and possibly for any other USC student hearing the story, it’s interesting because it presents a side to the DPS that we as students don’t normally hear about. It raises interesting questions as to why the DPS investigate this house that often in the first place and how the story is told amongst themselves. When one of them is told to go investigate it, how does he or she feel about this if he or she has been told about the supposed history of this house? It is curious that this story does not circulate amongst the student population of USC as ghost stories usually thrive amongst young adults around college-age, especially when it involves a location near them. Perhaps this can be attributed to the fact that this house is probably not one open to the public and thus the only legal reason a person would have for ever entering the house is to investigate it for some official reason, as the DPS officers do in this account. But it is still odd that even rumors of this house have not appeared en masse amongst the students and that even a Google search for haunted locations in the USC area turns up nothing except staged haunted houses for the purposes of Halloween celebrations.

Slang about UCLA

Nationality: Pakistani-American
Age: 23
Residence: CA
Performance Date: 3/16/2014
Primary Language: English
Language: Urdu

Context: The informant is a young professional who graduated from UCLA in 2012.  She relays that the acronym for her school had the unofficial meaning of the “University of Cute Little Asians”.

Analysis: A quick search of the UCLA website’s enrollment statistics shows that the ethnic category with the highest enrollment is those who have checked the “Asian/Pacific Islander” box, at 34.8% of total students; the next largest group is white students at 27.8%. The informant herself is not white, nor did she elaborate on whether or not she used the term in her own conversations, but she did confirm that at her time at UCLA, a large portion of the students she saw on a daily basis appeared to be of Asian descent.

The term therefore seems to be a somewhat racist comment on the high population of Asian-descent students at UCLA, combined with the well-worn stereotype that those of East Asian ancestry are shorter in stature than white people, and the fetishization of Asians, particularly Asian women, with the term “cute”.

A somewhat related term I have heard during my time at USC is “University of Spoiled Children”, quite obviously referring to the stereotype of most USC students being rich and white, and a good many of them “legacy” students, meaning an older family member also attended. This view, however distasteful to some, is actually rather true: USC’s student body is 39% white (the next biggest group, 23%, is Asian). And according to an LA Times article, “the percentage of USC students [whose family income is] over $200,000…is more than twice as high as [UCLA]’s”.

I have also heard the much less controversial and more humorous “University of Summer Construction” (but not just summer anymore–I have been a student since the fall of 2010, and there has been some sort of constrution, modification, addition, or repairing going on every single semester along the commonest routes I take across campus).