Obama needs to bolster liberties


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President Barack Obama’s inaugural address Monday was unsurprisingly eloquent and touched on the ideas and promises of past leaders for motivation in moving forward in his final term. The address, which appropriately fell on Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday, included exhortations for furthering freedom and equality at home and abroad. The president also cited the […]

Plastic surgery doesn’t define person


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There’s no denying it: All around the world, the culture of nip and tuck is being cultivated, grown and blown up to epic proportions. A fascinating dichotomy arises, one where a plastic surgery culture of outer beauty and covetousness exists next to issues of insecurity about our frail bodies and an itching sense of dissatisfaction […]

Should the US intervene in global human rights?


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Citizens have the responsibility to intervene in other countries in order to ensure rights for all.   As many 17-year-olds in the United States enjoyed the luxury of a formal education, Sri Lankan teenager Rizana Nafeek traveled from her homeland in 2005 to Saudi Arabia to serve as a maid. Though practically just a child herself, […]

Online piracy poses little risk to business


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When 26-year-old computer programmer and political activist Aaron Swartz committed suicide last Friday, news of his death spread across the Internet with the same speed as the viral videos and the applications he had helped to produce. At the time of his death, he faced unnecessarily harsh felony charges entailing a possible 35-year sentence and […]

Education is essential to prison reform


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In 1989, five 14-to 15-year-old boys, four black and one Hispanic, were convicted of a crime they did not commit. They spent between five and  11 years in juvenile delinquent centers and prisons in New York. Though the boys were victims of institutional racism and a flawed justice system that robbed them of a significant […]

Students can help reduce pollution


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When we agreed to attend university in Los Angeles, a smoggy skyline was the catch to palm trees, beaches and year-round good weather. But air pollution remains much more than an ugly stain on the Southern California aesthetic — and more, even, than an environmental issue. Research conducted by USC and Children’s Hospital Los Angeles […]

Congress must close Guantanamo


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Opponents of Guantanamo Bay, the high-security detainment facility in Cuba used to house detainees believed to be connected with the War on Terror, decry the prison as a violation of civil rights and an  unignorable failure of justice. A report released last week by the Government Accountability Office indicated that U.S. prisons could safely absorb […]

NDAA section ban defends civil liberties


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The public uproar earlier this year over unconstitutional provisions of the National Defense Authorization Act pushed Congress to pass Amendment 3018 last Thursday, banning a key provision of the NDAA that authorized indefinite detention of U.S. citizens. Despite partisan shortcomings, Congress has shown that it can rally members of both parties to prevent the abridgement […]

What should the university’s approach to security be?


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The last year at USC has been marked by two major violent crimes: the tragic killings of two graduate students in April and the shooting on Halloween night. USC was also marked by increased security measures, both on and off campus. The Los Angeles Police Department added extra patrols in addition to 30 officers, a […]

Media needs more independent outlets


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On Wednesday, British Prime Minister David Cameron came out in support of an “independent regulatory system” to oversee Britain’s scandal-torn media. In the last two years, one of the biggest scandals dealt with Rupert Murdoch’s global media company, News Corporation, which came under fire for phone hacking, bribery and other desultory journalistic practices. Though Cameron’s […]