The Sun Needs to Set on the USC Empire

Not too long after USC announced its enterprise to build a new University Village in the image of the Grove in Beverly Hills, rumor spread that they want to buy the coliseum for 50 million dollars.

I understand that USC’s number one fall back is its location, but why are we aiming for perfection? If building this new shopping mall as well as gaining ownership of the stadium is in pursuit of creating a better area and attracting brighter students, it’s sending the opposite message.

If USC wants to attract students of Ivy-league caliber, they have to do things of Ivy-league status. Constructing a high-end shopping center and luxury apartments isn’t going to attract the next generation of Ivy-league intellect, but those craving the status that accompanies such prestige. If we want to attract the minds of the future, then we shouldn’t resort to methods of the past by further commercializing an area that would benefit much more from a grassroots campaign.

If USC really wants to improve the area and attract the brightest applicants, why not use that money to improve the state of education in the surrounding area? The magnet schools around campus provide a great opportunity for the inner city Los Angeles Students that attend. But the influence of USC quickly dissipates the further you get from campus, even if we’re talking 1 or 2 miles. There are many students receiving a very sub-par education in zip codes reachable by foot, so why not use that money to benefit them? Institute community programs to replace the arts and music classes that have been lost due to budget cuts. Offer free college-prep courses to high school students in the area. Provide them with scholarships not only to USC, but any accredited institution. If USC has the power to take ownership of the acres of land the UV sits on and the coliseum, I’m sure they could finagle their way into the Los Angeles Unified School District and supplement the low budgets of nearby public schools as well.

Investing in education is the big picture solution. By improving the foundation on which the future sits, the students in the area will have more opportunities and inherently more success. They will include their families in their newfound glory, advancing their socioeconomic position, and improving the area around USC naturally.

It will be a slow process, but one that benefits both the university and the area in the long run. Creating a megaplex shopping center will only validate our reputation as the “University of Spoiled Children.” If we want to attract students that will one day change the world, we have to change the world now.

Big Bad Bully America

The United States’ position as top contender of the industrialized world is the very reason why it sucks. Because Americans no longer have to fight for their survival, they’ve begun to fight against it.

Although there are times when there is, like, “nothing to drink” despite the virtually endless flow of clean water from our sinks, and other times when you have like, “literally nothing to wear” despite the 50+ articles of clothing in your closest, most of us can agree that our basic survival needs are met on a daily basis.

But we’ve had it too good for too long, and the implications are becoming hard to ignore. Rather than fending off starvation, we suffer from an obesity epidemic.

While adolescents in developing nations band together for survival, we see our youth bullying each other to the point of suicide. Prolonged prosperity has invited a whole new realm of issues that are difficult to define and even harder to fix.

Like mentioned, one of these difficult-to-define and hard-to-fix problems is bullying. In a typical bully-victim relationship, the bully, usually someone higher on the social ladder (a position achieved by instilling fear, probably due to “advanced” physical size (ahem, obesity epidemic)) preys on victims because of a perceived physical, social, or financial ineptness (or because they have pudding snacks). Why the bully engages in such aggressive behavior is not quite understood, but it is certain that it lowers the self-esteem of the victim, making them more vulnerable.

But in all seriousness, bullying is becoming an increasing concern. On Sunday, a 16 year-old boy from Corpus Christi, Texas, committed suicide after years of torment and no effort from the school district to stop it. The school denied that bullying was a problem, despite community parents who spoke up and claimed to have withdrawn their students from the school because of unrelenting torment. This is just one of the dozens of cases that has made national spotlight this year, and just one of millions instances of bullying itself.

From an evolutionary perspective, bullying could be explained by Darwin’s “survival of the fittest” hypothesis. But we don’t have to fight for our survival anymore because it is practically guaranteed by our modern society—our psyche just needs to catch up with reality.

The autonomy allowed by our society creates a false sense of independence, people undermining the role other people play in our lives. They think independence is buying their own groceries, but where would they be without markets in the first place? Because mass collaboration is no longer needed to survive, there has been a mass disintegration in order to “thrive. ”

Psychologists argue that humans are social beings in the first place because we needed each other to stay alive. Men hunt and protect. Women gather and make babies. But with the autonomy allowed by our current industrialized society interdependence is less pronounced. Fueled by the idea that we no longer need to each other to get by, have we subconsciously began to divide, doing what we can to retain our allusion of power we hold over others?

What is bullying if not a magnified version of the social stratification of America—an elitist group leveraging their power on a vulnerable lower class? The recent Occupy Movements come to mind. It’s driven by a group of people who feel victimized and immobilized by another group, whose dominance is vague yet unyielding. There have been countless acts of physical aggression against the lower class in reaction to their pleas for equality. Earlier this week, around 30 people were pepper sprayed outside of a Santa Monica College trustee board meeting protesting proposed higher course fees. Two of the victims were a mother and toddler in the crowd. Like bullying in school, this is one of countless examples.

Our prolonged prosperity has us fighting to ensure individual success, not collective. And when this is reversed, we will see an end to the complex issues our society faces. We will be able to reap of the benefits of being on top when people think it how they could help our whole population, not only themselves. If we were all working together, bills for universe healthcare would pass. We would petition to have education programs expanded, not cut. The wealthy would except their social responsibility as the breadwinners and happily pay more taxes to provide more for the millions of people who live below them.

In order to stop sucking, we have to start sharing.