...and their memories

Melanie Asp
My farewell column. Add your own memory

Kamron "Kam" Barron
My farewell column Add your own memory

Shashank Bengali
Elisa may have told you, I was a city writer in the fall of 1997, projects writer in the spring of 98 and editorial columnist in the fall of 98. I remember those as being relatively quiet semesters, but the biggest news events were the labor union threatening to strike and some controversy in DPS over one incident of alleged officer racism and another incident of an officer molesting a high school student. As a projects writer, I did a series on DPS that looked at the department's role on campus and how the department was being perceived in light of the controversy. That series got great support from Elisa and the other editors at the time. I remember Dave Khalaf being the resident cut-up. I remember Mike Cisneros REALLY got into the Blood Bowl. I remember Jon Cassidy being great to write for, and being so keyed up during his speech to become editor in the spring of 99 that his hands were shaking visibly. And I remember watching Mac 10 and De La Soul perform in Hahn Plaza from the best seats on campus -- the DT office. My biggest regret is that I didn't get to work for Christine Frey or with the phat new computers they got installed more than a year ago. Add your own memory

Laura Branosky
I joined the DT because Ben Acker made me. We were both RA's in Pardee Tower in...1999-2000? (I think) along with Vic Manley. Ben, as head of the Art Department, had too many illustrations to do alone. Eventually I was recruited by Patrick Dent and mainly focused on editorial cartoons. I think I did most of my drawing during classes, right before the deadline. I'm sorry that I wasn't really part of the DT culture. I loved being up there, but film school reared its ugly head and I had to buckle down and pay attention in class. I'm trying to remember any big issues that flared up while I was at the DT. There was the janitorial strike, which I remember because I did a horrible drawing for whatever reason and I felt it deserved more attention. That was an uncomfortable time, since we all loved our janitorial staff at Pardee. There were the election debates...I'll have to look back into my scrapbook and see if I can find something more specific. Good job with the site! I can't say I remember many people from the DT, but if you hear from Pat, Vic, or Ben, pass on my address. Add your own memory

Kelly Brinker
I noticed David is already on the site. He is a very private guy and he might kill me if I spill the beans on him. I think it is OK to tell you that he lives in Burbank with his dog, Missy. Add your own memory

Kyle Buchanan
You may remember Kyle for doing investigative reporting duties for the front page, avoiding staffers who tried to conscript him into an editing job, and missing a DT party where he got an award for his work. Does anybody still have that award? Because I'd like to pick it up now. ;-) Add your own memory

Rachel Campbell
I doubt I have much to add really because I lived in the Diversions office until Fall 2000 when I was managing editor. I'm sure you know how the Diversions people tend to be oblivious to everything else besides movies and films. Heck, we didn't even have a window to the outside world! However, the one night I will always remember will be election night 2000. We had an assignment editor who lives for presidential elections like some people live for watching the next USC football game. For him, watching the "results" was the most exciting thing. He even had a poll going for members of the staff to make their predictions on who will when and by how many electoral votes. Simply put, it was pure craziness election night. To top it off, 10 minutes before we were about to send the DT off for the night with the top article saying that no official declaration of the winner had been made at press time, the news stations said Bush won. So, we changed the first few paragraphs and put a banner headline saying something like Bush wins. And that's how it came out the next day, much to our embarrassment and dismay! So, that was probably my most interesting night at the DT. Hope that helps. Add your own memory

Keith Caulfield
I've attached a photo of Stacy Matros and myself. We were mocking the pictures in "28th Street" of all the Greeks posing with red cups with goofy smiles on their faces. (Mel, Vic, Elisa -- thought you'd get a kick out of it.) So we grabbed all of the liquid containers near us, struck a Drunk Greek Partier pose, and snapped a picture. It was originally supposed to be in our "Open House" mini-"DT" that we were going to give out (since all of the senior editors had pictures in it) but I think either Melanie, Victoria or Mona (maybe) nixed that idea. lol. Add your own memory

Guadelupe "Lupe" "Jay" Chavez Jr.
Well, I hope what I write doesn't upset you, but I never graduated from USC, I was there for three years and then something happened. The big issue while I was there and probably continues to this day, is race. In California, Prop. 187 had just gone through, the civil rights initiative, and OJ's trial ended fall of 1995, so the issue cards in play all dealt with color. I was drawn to DT because staff opinion writers all touted the equal society, meritocracy of America. I got sick of reading just one point of view. So I was the only Mexican-American writer in editorial addressing "Hispanic" and minority issues. I also spoke up for black community because I don't believe there was an African-American writer on Staff. Although, I must say that the DT group was very open to diversity and I hardly had an problems with editorial policy. It was a great group of people, Melanie Asp, Nick, Vickie Manley, and the sports people were obviously young professionals with that killer instinct. I myself started interning after my freshman year and got bored with the pedestrian and "collegiate" news. It wasn't the excitement I had found in the real world, getting picked up by the picked up by the Associated Press. I left in 1998 after discovering that a Latino fraternity had suspiciously been admitted to International Fraternity Council and the governing body of the national fraternity system. Do you know how long that takes? Years, and these guys accomplished the feat in less than a semester. Apparently, a fraternity had thrown bottles, cans, and kegs at the Latino group when they were trying to get support on the Row by walking up and down 28th Street introducing themselves. I got this information first hand from fraternity and published it. That didn't make them happy and they plotted their Machiavellian, skull and bones type revenge. They jumped me at a party when I was drunk. I escaped unharmed physically but emotionally, I was wrecked. I wrote (Vice President for Student Affairs) Michael Jackson and the fraternity advisors about what had happened and Jackson said it was a "Mexican" problem and didn't concern him. So, I spray painted a peace sign on Tommy Trojan and got arrested, but was never booked or written up by USC for the incident. The administration knew I would end up leaving and that's what happened. In 1998 I started working the Cop beat for The Monitor in McAllen, Texas, then I started my own multimedia company and published 3 magazine issues of 20,000 in spring of 1999 for high school students. In august 2001 I was hired by USDA to do public relations. Thank you for the service of this Web site, and I hope my rebellious demarcation of Tommy doesn't get me kicked of alumni database because I'm a black sheep. It was great to hear that so many of the old-timers are doing well., including yourself. Add your own memory

April Haitsuka
http://www.dailytrojan.com/article.do?issue=/V130/N62&id=03-american.62d.html Add your own memory

Jennifer "Jen" Hamm
My farewell column. Add your own memory

Branden Hancock
What a long strange trip life on the fourth floor was. Thinking back 4 years later, I still remember the DT as the best time I had on Campus. Thanks to Troy Witt for dragging me that fateful fall afternoon. Cheers to the rest of you. Glad to hear you're doing well Nick and Vic. Add your own memory

Ryan Hochgesang
My farewell column. Add your own memory

John Hoelle
Thanks for your note. The alumni page is clearly a labor of love! Your name sounds familiar, but I doubt we had much contact. I started drawing a single-panel cartoon for the DT my freshman year, under a very laid-back graphics editor named Trent Tanaka (name remembered with a little help from your page). There were only two comics or so per day if I remember, because Jordan Crane was abroad in some country or other. Then he came back and became editor, and mightily extended the comics page with syndicated strips like Jim's Journal, Feet of Clay, and others through Onion syndicate. I remember he was very proud the day the Comics Page was actually a full page. My cartoon, "Yeah, Whatever," ran that day. Jordan became a friend and starred in one of my super-8 movies (I am a film-production grad). I saw him once a few years back at Mr. T's Bowl in Highland Park where we were both at a farewell concert for a local USC grad populated band, the Mashnotes. He was on his way to San Diego to be on a panel about self-publishing comics at the largest comic convention in the world. Anyway, as I said, being a cartoonist who worked at home, I was an ephemeral presence in the DT office, so I don't have too many stories. After Jordan graduated and I got pretty deep into my senior year of producing and shooting student films, I drew cartoons only infrequently for editor Ben Ackerman, in my memory a soft-spoken but very funny guy. The only DT zeitgeist in the late 90's that I recall was the sexual politics column by Laura Lanchester and Ken Braslow... I would love to be a larger part of any alumni get-togethers, potentially even at a club where my band is playing! Heh heh. We have a number of dates around town this month... check the website. Take care, man. And thanks for the archives. Best, John Add your own memory

Matt Hutaff
Re: DT life in the late 90s... to my recollection, aside from some strong investigative stuff involving a teacher's signature being forged by the Business School and an expose regarding the Trojan Knights and their hazing rituals, I don't really remember any craziness. Most of the City stuff is pretty dry, usually. I do remember the Sports staff pissing off Keyshawn Johnson and being summarily ignored by the entire football team. My participation pretty much ended in terms of daily time spent there when my term as Graphics Editor expired in Fall of 1996. It was fun. The people were nice, except they were far too motivated given the material they were working with. :-) I write satire so at most I was writing once every couple of weeks, and my columns were routinely edited for no reason despite repeated attempts to figure out why. Mostly I stuck around for the friends. When they all graduated in Spring of 1997, I took my leave. The people two years my senior were my favorites and I wish I kept in contact with them. Now, thanks to your site, I can. :) Add your own memory

Greg Keating
Titles: Photog (is there anything better in this life?) Add your own memory

Laura Lanchester
the other day my father mailed out one of the last boxes of crap I had left at his place when I moved out years ago, and all my old DTs, I mean literally every DT I ever breathed on, more or less, was in that box. And I of course had to go through every glorious one. [The] sifting through of all the papers made me super nostalgic, and I wrote the following after that experience: "I'm feeling all nostalgic about the DT, after scouring through every single issue I ever contributed to in my four years as a staff member. The stack, all nine inches, represents everything I'm most proud of creating/writing/editing/accomplishing in my time at USC, and plenty of other stuff I can't believe I actually passed off as journalism. I remember being Daily Trojan Staff Member of the Year the semester I worked for photo, city and diversions all at once, but mostly it was just because I let Sean Conley manipulate me and he was appreciative. Michelle Ladd firing me as co-photo editor the end of my sophomore year. Being Melanie Asp's right hand girl. Writing only two unsigneds. Saying whatever it took to get on the Quote List. Getting Jeremy Zink to go on the record about the Trojan Knight hazing manual. Getting drunk for the first time in my life at Roy Nwaisser's parties. George Stankow massaging my shoulders while I was typing my photo captions on those green-screened-old-as-hell-terminals before the Macs came. Doing the crossword in the middle of the city room with Quinn Olsen. Playing that game on the Macs that made Butthead say, "Uh, burritos" over and over again and driving Nick Divito and April Haitsuka crazy. The Genocide file. Having Vic Manley hold my hair while I was puking in Jordan Crane's upstairs bathroom. Last Shop nights. Getting all my friends in the paper for Trojan on the Street. Box-ing. Trying to corrupt the young, innocent minds of Greg Kheraghosian, Jason Spencer, Joe Soqui and Armen Keulian in the sports office. Jen Hamm getting me stoned. Going on a date with the hot new sports guy before anyone else did. Smoking on the balcony with Ben Acker. The Student Senate election scandals. Getting the negative scanner. Nik Trendowski's fascination with the LA bus system. DT romance. Fighting over every single line of The Morning After with Ken Braslow. Developing my pictures of Comic Relief until 3:30am on a Sunday night, and leaving the darkroom an hour before the Northridge earthquake hit. Hiring Troy Witt. Ron. Mona. Feedback Fridays. James Brown's guide to giving a good blow job. The option. The senior editor retreat at Lake Henshaw. Getting to go to Universal, Six Flags, and the Renaissance Pleasure Faire for Summer Trojan features. Basically spending every waking moment and even intentionally blowing off class just to hang out in the city room. I wrote for Viewpoint, Diversions and City, was a Photographer and Photo Editor, Copy Edited, was Managing Editor and did one Graphic. It's really no wonder I graduated with a less than spectacular GPA, but I wouldn't trade it for the world." Add your own memory

Tariq Malik
I was on staff for only two separate semesters (I double majored in Print Journalism and Astonomy until math decided to strike me down my senior year and I busted Astronomy down to a minor) in Spring of '96 and Spring '99. Because of my dual studies I didn't get to hang out much at the DT offices, so I couldn't tell ya about the issues inside other than Jin Whang was a great editor. Oh, and I liked Matt Hutaff's stuff too. I was around for the big breakup when the J-school decided its students needed to get more special reporting classes in, and they cut classes like Government Reporting and Arts and Sports from 4 units down to 2. My first semester I used to cover Fridays and only took one day off to drive home for spring break. Of course THAT would be the day that one of the dorms caught fire and torched 8 apartments, ousting 36 people. One of my close friends was one of them. I was in those apartments the night before too... But my biggest thrill was writing about the opening of Denny's (honest) which was my first lead story and my first EVER with art. I still have it, too. Ah...good times. The second semester around ended up providing the impetus to my career, when I wrote a profile on parapalegic med student Suzy Kim. She was inspiring, and recruiters seemed to like the clip (and I scored my one and only photo credit). Some of the more memorable people on the staff? well, I still stay in contact with Olivia Hemaratanatorn. She's one of my best friends in the world and works for Variety in Los Angeles. Franke Santos I chat with every now and then, and Thuy-Doan Le. I remember procrastinating with Kelly Pullin and running out to give blood instead of writing my story. Yeah, good times. Add your own memory

Richard Manfredi
This is interest[ing], since I never wrote for the DT, except for a couple of columns. I was part of the KSCR Student Senate reporting team that scooped your butts, though. Add your own memory

Victoria "Vickie" "Vic" Manley
Sadly, Vickie's farewell column isn't available online anymore. I'll go dig it up someday. Add your own memory

David Mendenhall
I miss all of my friends from the DT, as well as all of our days and nights spent working there together, and I hope everyone's well! Add your own memory

Aaron Paquette
Aaron has fond memories of writing his weekly editorial column and proudly kept all the angry mail he received..... "I have a lot of fond memories of the DT. As a weekly columnist who submitted most of his work to his editors over e-mail or the server, I didn't spend a whole lot of time in the office, but I still remember a lot of the talented, larger-than-life characters I got to work with. My editors--Patrick Dent, Christian Cooper, Victoria Manley and Kelly Pullin--were all very supportive people who gave me a lot of freedom in the topics I chose and the manner in which I chose to attack them. At the end of the semester, Patrick gave all of the regular columnists a framed copy of one of their best columns, and mine sits proudly in my office today. Christian was a really nice guy, Vickie wrote some AMAZING columns about some very difficult personal subjects, and Kelly was a friend from a statewide high school club with whom it was great to work again. And, of course, there was Wes Biggs (he roped me into doing a punk rock skit at the Trustee Scholars retreat...I found myself belting out a punk version of "Wake Up, Little Suzie" in front of 50 stunned classmates); Laura Lanchester (I got to work with her in Student Senate as well...always the life of the party); Matt Hutaff (a witty guy who truly deserved the Art Buchwald Award); Nik Trendowski (another great writer and true original); Melanie Asp (I would tease her about all the stuff on her website); Christian D. Orr (a fellow College Republican who was never afraid to express himself); and Erik Sanjurjo (he stirred up quite a controversy when he did a column about straight women who have gay male best friends, two years before WILL & GRACE). All told, a fun, witty, creative group to be around! Fortunately, we were living in interesting times, so I always had plenty to talk about in my column. There was the '96 presidential election (in my first column, I predicted our next president would be...Pete Wilson!?); the O.J. verdict; the hanging/burning of the Bruin; the Million Man March and all the other racial issues of Fall '95, which caused a lot of tension on campus; the labor dispute between USC and its janitorial/food service staff (I did several columns on this); the scandal in which athletes got an "easy A" in one particular professor's class (I wrote a column on this topic and ended up winning the Best Signed Editorial Award at our end-of-the-semester dinner)...the list goes on and on. Most of my columns were about political/social issues happening on campus or nationally, but I didn't want to narrow my focus just to politics, so I also wrote columns on things like why celebrities self-destruct, after the death of producer Don Simpson; why the funny pages aren't so funny anymore, after the CALVIN & HOBBES creator retired; the randomness of life and death after one of our classmates was killed in a plane crash; and how difficult it is going back home and facing change, after they tore down my high school. However, as could be expected, it was always the "hot button" columns that people talked about. I would get my share of angry letters, and I delighted in them. I figured that if my writing could get people so fired up that they would take time out of their busy day and put pen to paper themselves, I must be doing *something* right. Anyway, thank you for putting this site together! I stumbled across it by accident, and I loved what I saw. Once I started getting heavily involved with CBS, I lost touch with my DT colleagues, so I loved seeing what everybody's been up to. Keep up the good work, and thanks again for doing this! Add your own memory

Matt Scott
Joanna Niles will be remembered for throwing the best staff meetings complete with jello shots and loving distain for the sports department. From all of us who worked with her, we would like to thank her for keeping the film fridge well stocked with beer. Add your own memory

Keisha Thomas
I started at the DT as a City staff writer when I was a broadcast journalism, but then found that covering lost bicycles wasn't really my thing. I switched to the School of Cinema and the Diversions section and never looked back. Add your own memory

Shant Thomas
Sayz Kelly: My favorite memory of Shant was when we had a group of people walking us home from the Christmas '97 party that we had in Colin's frat house, the two of us were too drunk to walk by ourselves. They were taking me home first so as we walked down the row, we ran into a bunch of sorority girls and Shant yelled to them, "You're blond, you're beautiful, and you're facists." Add your own memory

Luke Thompson
My involvement with the DT was fairly minimal beyond turning in articles. Amusingly in retrospect, this was before everyone had email, so I'd turn in articles on paper and some poor soul would have to retype them! Ironic that journalism is now the medium I find myself in. Probably my most controversial piece was an article about how awful the football mentality was. That week, though, there was some controversy involving Keyshawn Johnson, so my article went ignored. Rush Limbaugh was the campus hero back then. May still be for all I know. Add your own memory

Elisa Ung
My farewell column. Add your own memory

Isaiah Weedn
Since I was a photographer I wasn't around the office a whole lot and when I was I was usually in the darkroom anyway so I must confess that I didn't know too many people on staff. The only guy I had any sort of regular contact with was Troy Witt who was the head of the photo department at the time. As far as the big issues and stories of the day here's what I can remember: 1. Cecil Mammitt winning the NCAA individual tennis title as a freshman and then leaving to turn pro in Spring 1996. 2. Adam Stokes attempting to buy the ASB President election by bribing his opponent's running mate to drop out of the race (the whole sordid affair was caught on tape). Spring 1996 as well. 3. Mike Garrett firing John Robinson via answering machine and the subsequent Paul Hackett era (maybe the darkest period of USC football). 4. The big fire that gutted part of the Troy Hall apartments and spawned a make-shift refugee camp in Lambda Chi. Fall 1996 or Spring 1997. 5. The rains of El Nino in 1998 which flooded a good portion of campus north university park. 6. A girl selected for the Yell Leader squad in 1998. That's all I can remember off the top of my head. Nothing as exciting as a real natural disaster or civil unrest but we can't all be so lucky. Add your own memory

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