The Girls are Gagged: USC creates its own borderland

Recently, USC shunned community skaters from lingering on campus through a variety of unnecessary measures. In addition to their already anti-skater and anti-homeless architecture, they transformed a once open and unused space that was freely used by community skateboarders into a fence with a laminated paper sign reading, “CLOSED UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE,” “NO SKATEBOARDERS.” 

For too many of us, this may seem like an isolated incident of a private institution rightfully protecting its property. However, what happens when we broaden our perspectives and defamiliarize ourselves with what is normalized at USC? 

What if we look at how gates surround the campus and how on-campus libraries close to the community after 9 p.m.? What if we question how the existence of yellow jackets is to keep others out of the University rather than merely keeping students safe? What stereotypes do these practices perpetuate about the communities of color around us, and more importantly, what message do these practices tell members of the South Central community? 

Writer and scholar Gloria E. Anzuldúa wrote about colonization and the United States-Mexico border through a lens of understanding the collective trauma of being othered in space, writing “borders are set up to define the places that are safe and unsafe, to distinguish us from them.” 

She described the U.S.-Mexico border as una herida abierta, an open wound that is constantly being tethered and recut. Anzuldúa also wrote about the term “borderland,” which is the result of the “emotional residue of an unnatural boundary.” 

“Los atravesados live here: the squint-eyed, the perverse, the queer, the troublesome, the mongrel, the mulatto, the half-bred, the half-dead,” she said. Through Anzuldúa’s work, we can understand borders, restrictions and gates as not just physical, but also as ideas that carry symbolic meaning and emotional weight. 

Paula Acedo, a sophomore majoring in geodesign, focuses her work at USC on bringing education and access back to the Boyle Heights community she comes from. Acedo offers a valuable perspective as to what it is like to experience USC — and the effects of its gentrification, privatization of space and displacement of the surrounding community — from a short distance. 

“Instead of making them feel that they are important and that we value where they come from, and we aren’t here to destroy … we give off the impression that they don’t matter; that just money, just bills, just the USC name, making it bigger and better is the only thing that matters,” Acedo said. 

In analyzing increased restrictions from USC, we must also look at the attitudes of the Los Angeles police and infrastructure that have intentionally fostered a strong anti-skater culture which is often overly criminalized. 

Earving Garcia, a 26-year-old skater from the L.A. community describes skating near USC as a “nice, pretty buttery spot,” especially given that most good skate spots are found at the “outskirts in the smaller cities, not this main city,” with the closest skate park about a 35-minute walk from USC — likely an intentional move by the institutional giant given its power in controlling development surrounding the area.  

However, these areas aren’t just convenient skate spots; they have become a community in itself. While they aren’t as formal or posh as the cultural centers on campus, it’s where people came to exist and support one another. 

Benjamin Chai, a senior majoring in cyber operations, has been skating at USC since freshman year and loves the open lot. 

“Bro, that place was a [fuckin] community center,” Chai said. “It wasn’t just skating; people pull up there to chill, I met so many friends there.” 

Acedo calls for reform of University policies that restrict space from skaters coming to USC from the community. 

“Especially in a community of color … you are not prioritizing your health. A lot of these students come from troubled households,” Acedo said. “A lot of them are unhoused, and when you take away the one outlet they have to be able to separate themselves from the already hard life at home, you are not letting society level up. And you preach so much about, ‘We need things to change,’ ‘Why is there so much crime?’ You’re not giving them any other option but to cause crime.”

USC could use this open space as a literal and metaphorical means of showing members of the South Central community that they matter to us and that we have space for them, their outlets and their talents — that we do not view their existence as inherently disruptive, but instead as something valuable to our campus culture. 

If they really wanted to, USC could easily make the vacant basketball lot previously used for skating open. These ideas might seem radical, but would they really be that difficult for an institution with an $8.12 billion endowment to execute?

Instead, USC will continue to make what’s old new, reinforcing what Anzuldúa famously noted as a borderland through gates and regulations. As students, we should perpetually be thinking about the language, rhetoric and actions we take in relation to the community around us. We must not forget that our pretty and lush campus — along with all the resources that come alongside it — is a privilege created at the expense of communities who were here long before us. Let’s remember who the real intruders are: us. 

Arjun Bhargava is a sophomore writing about differing identities and their role in our larger political & cultural landscape. Their column, “The Girls are Gagged” runs every other Thursday.