An Open Letter to USC

By: Talia Walters ‘20

Dear USC,

I love you, but we’ve got some things we need to talk about.

USC, I loved you from the moment I laid my eyes on your beautiful brick walkways and the tropical palm trees towering around campus. I’ve loved you since I yelled “Fight On!” with my fellow Trojans at orientation. I fell in love with you, holding piles of USC T-Shirts in my hands, riding down the escalator with my mom in the bookstore, realizing that my new home was going to be your campus, and bright-eyed freshman-year me got a little teary at the pride I felt within your walls.

Oh, but USC, you have a reputation. A history.

It feels as though everything started as soon as I arrived at USC, but we can only guess at the number of scandals USC has gone through in its long history. The big recent ones are still clear in everyone’s mind.

The college admission scandal that put us in the big leagues, leaving everyone with somewhat of a bad taste in your mouth. Do you know if your classmates got in on merit or money? Today, when you say you go to USC, you hear the same joke that isn’t as funny if you’re living it – “how much did your parents pay to get you in?”

Before the college admission scandal, we had the terrible investigation of George Tyndall. Every article in every newspaper was bad press, indicting Tyndall and the school with more and more charges. Every day a new story came out, and every day, it kept getting worse. I went to Engemann once last semester, only for a cough. I don’t really trust it for anything else.

Even before Tyndall, there was the meth-smoking medical dean, which I will admit is an incredibly funny phrase to type, but it doesn’t feel like it’s real. No other school could possibly have a similar story. Of course, the drug-using dean was replaced with a man who had to step down only a few weeks later due to sexual harassment allegations. There appears to be a theme.

These are just the big examples. These are the things we know of and the ones that made headlines; I can’t imagine the number of stories that were caught before they broke to the public, allowing USC to sweep them under the rug to save themselves.

This is all on top of the everyday horror that is USC. Tuition keeps spiking wildly every year, figuring out your courses and studies is a bureaucratic nightmare (I literally have 6 advisers who have never spoken to each other), and an increasingly frustrating housing situation despite the new village.

Now, when I graduate, the USC degree on my résumé isn’t going to be met with impressed smiles; the name has been tainted, and I’m kind of afraid to graduate because my degree isn’t going to mean the same thing it did to employers and admissions officers just 5 or 10 years ago. Between my own experiences at USC and the pure number of times I’ve read “the University of Southern California” in a news article, it’s clear that something has got to change.

USC, get yourself under control.

I fell in love with a version of you that I no longer recognize. The curtains were pulled back, and the incredibly disappointing wizard now stands. You may never be as perfect as the image I constructed when I started my first year; in fact, I know you will never be that perfect. But that doesn’t mean we can’t start changing things, digging ourselves out of the hole that we’re in.

I know almost nothing about running a university, but at this rate, I would argue that the same could be said for the people who are literally in charge of running USC right now, so I have a few suggestions to send into the ether.

First, there needs to be a total overhaul of the individuals who oversee and represent USC in every facet. We’ve started by appointing a new president, but that doesn’t change any of the questionable inner-workings that string together USC in a web of questionable ethical decisions that lead to the scandals mentioned above. I’m saying we need to review every person in power – every member of the board of trustees, the admissions office, the deans, the athletic directors, etc. – in order to weed out those who will make scandals. Listening to the students’ requests, like increasing representation of minority students among the power groups at USC, is also a good way to recognize the major problems within the system that those trying to fix things may be blind to.

Second, USC needs to find a way to cap/reduce its tuition. At some point, and I think it’s going to be soon that anyone realizes USC’s tuition bubble is going to pop. The USC education and title are not going to be worth its price tag, and it’s going to be a problem for both the school and for the students. Removing the focus of money, money, money all the time will stop bribery scandals, and it’ll begin to fix our reputation as a school. I promise you can find money somewhere else, from some other sources; other schools of the same caliber are able to do it, so can USC.

Third, the system at USC needs to be more efficient. I have never said (nor have I heard anyone say) “wow, USC solved my problem so quickly.” I have never been taught anything by an adviser, I’ve had long email arguments with the articulation office over contracts they should know better than I do, I’ve gone weeks without a response to my question, and I’ve gotten straight copy and paste emails from websites that I could’ve found on my own. Nothing should be this difficult. When a machine doesn’t function well, it’s more prone to breaking. Not only would a more efficient system cost USC less money (see above) and also make everyone happier, it’ll make it easier to nip scandals in the bud when it’s clear a gear in the machine has stopped working correctly. Also, a more educated staff on the happenings of different departments will lead to fewer mistakes and maltreatment and then, in return, fewer scandals.

This is not an exhaustive list of changes. It’s not like everything will be totally fine after we fix a few things; progress will still be necessary for smaller, more precise changes to the university. But, we have to start somewhere, and I think that changes like these will help push the university in the right direction.

USC, I love you. You have your faults, your many, many faults, but I love you. My heart is still just as proud of the name as the day I got in, and I don’t want my fellow students or myself to ever lose that overwhelming warmth of such a strong community. We all go through rough patches; we just have to work through yours together.

Love,

A frustrated, but incredibly hopeful, student

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