USC Village is officially open to students, members of community

The USC Village, the largest development project in the University’s history, officially opened Thursday with a grand celebration led by USC President C. L. Max Nikias. Thousands of students, families, faculty and community members were present to celebrate the opening of the $700 million, 15-acre residential and retail complex.

A statue of Hecuba, the Queen of Troy, was also publicly unveiled at the ceremony as the official female counterpart to Tommy Trojan.

In his opening speech, Nikias spoke passionately about the impact the USC Village will have on the community in the coming years, highlighting the amount of work that brought the project to fruition.

“[The USC Village took] more than 2.6 million hours of nearly 900 days of construction,” Nikias said. “We built this village to show our enduring commitment to our exceptional students and our beloved neighbors.”

He also spoke about the impact it will have on the local community and how it will shape the USC experience for future Trojans. The University will also host a Community Open House for nearby residents on Saturday.

“We have made a massive investment to provide our world-class students and our world-class faculty with a world-class village,” Nikias said.

Los Angeles City Councilman Curren Price was also present at the event to speak on the impact of the USC Village on the surrounding Los Angeles community.

“As chair of the economic delegate committee [on the L.A. City Council], I support projects like the Village that provide a meaningful long-term investment to our community,” Price said.

Professors and students also attended the ceremony. Neelesh Tiruviluamala, an assistant professor of mathematics and faculty advisor in Priam Residential College at the USC Village, expressed his hopes for the USC VIllage to bring together individuals from outside the Trojan Family.

“The Village brings in a lot more locals,” Tiruviluamala said. “While the campus is closed off, we’re going to have people going to Trader Joe’s and Target, and they’ll begin to understand what the Trojan student experience is about.”

As a faculty advisor, Tiruviluamala hopes to integrate new outreach programs for the students living at USC Village to further engage with the surrounding communities. The group of USC Village faculty advisers and residential assistants will have the opportunity to develop unique residential programs.

“Even before the USC Village came along, there were programs like [the Joint Educational Project] where students are brought to nearby schools,” Tiruviluamala said.  “I hope that we can create programs that are educational, with outreach programs for students interested in reaching out to local schools and develop cultural programs.”

Nikias also hinted at the USC Village acting as a symbol of greater inclusivity on campus.

“Queen Hecuba, my fellow Trojans, will not only serve as a new symbol of Troy,” Nikias said, during the grand reveal of the bronze statue. “It will be a symbol celebrating the women of Troy.”

The Queen of Troy, sculpted by Christopher Slatoff, is not only a female counterpart to Tommy Trojan, but is accompanied by figures of her six daughters as well.

The daughters possess a culturally diverse set of features, while Hecuba herself resembles a woman of mixed ancestry. According to Slatoff in an interview with the Los Angeles Times, the sculptures of Hecuba’s daughters were modeled after women with Native American, black, Asian, Latina/o, Caucasian and Middle Eastern descents. Slatoff said he was inspired to give Hecuba Mayan and African facial features.

Hecuba’s daughters were connected by a sculpted ribbon with the words Arts, Humanities, Science, Technology, Medicine and Social Sciences inscribed on it — representative of USC’s educational focuses.

The base of the statue contains an English inscription translated from Euripides’ “Hecuba” written in ancient Greek: “Those who have power ought not exercise it wrongfully, nor when they are fortunate should they imagine that they will be so forever.”