University of Southern California - El Rodeo Yearbook (Los Angeles, CA)

Page 11 text:

Monday mori the Ventura Freeway inb - the Laurel Canyon exit, a Vol .- spun off into the center divider ti avoid a cat, and traffic is backed u. way to the San Diego Freeway. On the Pomona Freeway inbound, a semi with a full load of BB shot has tipped over avoiding a wreckiess lane changer and spilled its cargo over the whole road. Traffic is backed up to the Long Beach interchange, and the cops at the accident are having a h standing up. In the four-level inte downtown, a Galaxie, travelling 20 miles an hour, has inexplicably run off the road into the ice plant and now rests quietly, tilted at an angle of 60 degrees, while the driver stands beside it bewildered. Traffic is backed up both ways for two miles. Near the sign reading University of Southern California, Museums, next right, a book lies between the white lines, its cover gone, its pages flapping. A truck carrying fuel oil slams over it, and the draft rips a few more printed sheets into the air, to join the squashed butterflies on the grille of a passing Cadillac. A young man in a red Corvair convertible on his way to college takes advantage of the slowing traffic to glance down at the torn remains; unsure of what he would prefer to see, a Bible or a porno paperback. But the glance tells nothing; the lines of type are a blur, and meaningless. The driver continues, manoevering between a white-haired, gloomy looking woman in a Dodge and a fierce man in a Ford Pickup to get into the right lane, his mind preoccupied with the uselessness of a book lost on the freeway. He starts to slow and drift to the right at the next exit and a yellow Mustang passes on the left. On the rear bumper is a kind orange sticker, fuHy legible: HAVE A NICE DAY.

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5. -S •O 13 C u u u c «i c ' i o Sea -O M I =- e 2 2i u E Li J2 ■£ p • - , rti — — CO ' l- DO c O C c O .i£ E o ut» EH £ O (u - o 2 -a t; -Q = -S c •J « o §.!2 E w- 00 1) op u u - 2 3 gr ii ' S o — E 5, ■£ w. 00 H - O J- C 0) U JJ l ' o j= a. 3 a. rj J= 00 M c S c £ ■eS ' I i ° O 4 -f - — BI C ' u As the semester began, September 21, with a national mood of apprehen- sion, the echo of conflict and violence had not been gone long and was promising to return. College students were among the most feared single groups in the nation, and sometimes also the most afraid. The explosive confrontations of the spring semester, represented at DSC by the Days of Concern and the options of the USC Plan in which activists could choose to end the semester early, had been followed by a summer of the more literal explosions of terrorist bombs. Only a few weeks before the semester began a bomb killed a physicist in Wisconsin and a young revolutionary group promised open warfare. Later, Bernardine Dohrn, of the Weather- men, promised a fall offensive of youth resistance that will spread from Santa Barbara to Boston, back to Kent and Kansas. ' ° But undercurrents of fear or cofi-; spiracy are hard to pin down and anyway, registration was accomplished with a minimum of violence. In the few hard core centers of tradition, institutions such as fraternity and sorority rush, and Presents, accepted the new beards and moustaches with- out flinching, although numbers de- creased. Rush was great for the girls who got what they wanted, said one of them, but a little hard on everypne. else. 5 o — ol ' u c 3