Remember that scene in the film, All the President’s Men? Dustin Hoffman, as Carl Bernstein of the Washington Post, questions Robert Walden, playing Donald Segretti, who chuckles when “Bernstein” asks him about USC. ‘Segretti” reminisces about the dirty tricks pulled off by a self-described “USC Mafia”.
Dirty Tricks at USC involved just a little on-campus voter suppression and a casual subversion of the democratic process - stuffing ballot boxes with false votes in order to torpedo rival candidates. In that 1962 student election they called it “rat-fucking”. Donald Segretti and pals (Dwight Chapin, Ron Zeigler, and the rest of the Mafia) would resurface, entering history, reuniting in Washington D.C. to rat fuck the Democratic party as primary target of the Watergate break-in and Congressional investigation a decade later.
These rogue bad boys managed to stir up a new kind of unapologetic anarchical swagger in popular consciousness, just below the radar of the felonies that brought down a presidency. One or two went to jail after Nixon resigned, but not for long. Though there was no official pardon for them, these guys, these imploders of civil conduct – might have given early observers of the culture wars historic pause. Was there something about USC that readily bred this brand of bully boy cynicism slippery-sloping to official mayhem? Or was USC the reflector of Nixonian amorality as Nixon publicly supported and “advised” the University at that time?
Rat-fucking was not Ashton Kucher’s cute “punking”, it was clandestine covert action by young-ish Republicans. USC has never NOT been Republican. From its inception in 1869, it has been a Repub Boys’ Club – no women in high or even middle administration for a century and beyond - until 2010 when the late Elizabeth Garrett, the first female Provost, was appointed by the mostly-male, mostly money-bags Board of Trustees. Back in 1962, “Trojans for a Representative Government” ripped off an undergraduate election. But by 1972, Dirty Tricks had become (for Watergate Republicans and beyond) – a matter of walking the walk: shake-downs and fake-outs, capable of overturning or at least knocking off-kilter electoral races.
If an extant society, say a college campus, could have its future altered by invented “realities” no matter how far-fetched – then maybe we can witness it all in slo-mo: the long-distance leap out of a campus trashing system to many crazy incubators of the Big Lie.
So the extended efforts of college pirates brought us Watergate and inspired new saboteurs in their sabotage of other campaigns, i.e. Edmund Muskie’s bid for President plagued by phone call impersonations and errant pizza deliveries with topping “proofs” of racism, a distorted accusation of John McCain as daddy to an African-American “love child” by Bush’s team, Valerie Plume, her CIA identity leaked & outed in the Wash Po, etc. (Then the mind travels to Steve Bannon, to Trump. Think info wars?)
And let us not forget how SC’s “kitchen cabinet” thrust a third-rate actor and dim politico-clown into the Presidency – the Reagan trend signaled a character vacuum and ponderous banalities labelled “Great Communication”.
While other universities offer up, with mea culpas, their long-closeted histories of slave-owning or racist legacies, USC has remained characteristically mum. Except of course for the “easy out” of SC’s own Herr von Kleinschmid – a quack eugenicist, all about keeping the Aryan line untainted. His name was scrubbed from his “named building” cornerstone and his plaque trashed. Blitz fast.
Then there is the matter of the looming campus statue of a horse, with its ass pointed toward Administration, called “Traveler” (or perhaps “Traveller”, like Robert E. Lee’s Confederate mount?). So far the pony has survived the ongoing half-hearted debate about its provenance.
No matter how much high-drag posturing re DEI, (Diversity, Equity, Inclusion), the world-class scandals (the meth-cooking medical school dean, the sexual deviant student health center gynecologist, Varsity Blues) tell another story. There’s an indelible clause defining USC, a untippable top hat like Tommy Trojan’s helmet: This is a corporation “that may refer to itself as a university.” The corporate bottom-line means the many “full disclosure” investigations of scandals promised by presidents and provosts, and by their masters, the Board of Trustees, are in fact in lockstep with lawyers, ensuring that transparency will remain occluded like a coastal inversion layer.
Attempts to call up the history of campus protests at USC – inevitably draw a blank. It is generally believed that there’s never been organized student or faculty outcry on those political or human rights issues that have traditionally mobilized Berkeley or Columbia or other U.S. campuses from the mid-20th century onward. When the way-overdue “catch and tell” alleged drugging and sexual assault at Sigma Nu fraternity (what else is new?) in November, 2021 actually inspired major on-campus protests – and another pledge from the current provost about full disclosure that was a non-starter and so far, no surprise: no show. But the protests themselves were referred to as “uncommon” – given USC’s perceived historical indifference to issues like decades of revelations involving drugs and alleged date rape on The Row. The point is taken – there was no indifference, students and faculty felt cut off from the sources of power – and apparently assumed that that path had been closed.
Still, perhaps there’s some protest history hidden - obscured by the inversion layer? About which SC might have “come clean” like other schools? Here’s a headline: “USC Out of South Africa”, from the journal “Against the Current” topping an article which reports that on February 7, 1990, USC “divestment activists” met to protest outside a Board of Trustees morning meeting.
“Since the mid-eighties, when USC failed to divest, divestment had been the rallying cry for the small and beleaguered progressive community at a school with a conservative history.
The administration, unaccustomed to open dissent, has ordered a security presence disproportionate to their size.” (approx. 60 students)
“Divestment” referred to the fact of USC’s notorious lone hold-out in refusing to withdraw its investment funds from South Africa, to protest the persecution and imprisonment of the revered anti-apartheid civil rights leader Nelson Mandela.
As reported in “Against the Current”, the students were chanting outside a closed doorway entrance, hoping that they’d be audible to the Board (inside Bovard.) At this point, “armed security guards and Los Angeles Police Department officers in riot gear” attack the students. A guard hits a student in the face with a nightstick, then attempts to crush other students in a heavy door as they try to escape. An officer strikes a woman in the abdomen several times, another slams a student against a wall with the full force of a baton.
The violence against protestors continues – revealing the unsmiling face of power at USC. Snap a photo for the “Trojan family” album?
The administration actually hired plain-clothes cops to follow students handing out leaflets and threatened arrest for students “standing within 150 yards” of the then-President, James Zumberge.
The journal’s report turns ironic, noting how in the 1970’s, administrators tried to turn USC from a “party school into a semi-serious research university” – via a plan to recruit “foreign students” and also “smart lower middle class or working class” students – to alter SC’s image as an apparent haven for rich, dim, privileged offspring of donors and alums.
An alum is quoted as objecting based on his/her analysis that “it’s well-known that intelligent people are less attractive”. (This is not so much a Dirty Trick, as a Dumb Person Dirty Think?)
The “divestment” coalition included foreign, non-traditional (non-white, non-wealthy) and female students with, the article says, “support from faculty.”
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The Board of Trustees had consistently refused to discuss divestment, justifying their “paternalistic” position – that the Trustees, along with “U.S. corporations’ “know better” than the people struggling against apartheid - what is “best for them.”
The article continues, in excruciating detail, giving lie to the cliché about USC students’ apathy or indifference re protesting human rights causes on campus, when there’s other hidden history… There has been, in fact, a decades-long student effort focused on the campus bookstore’s (no books!) sale of sweatshop-made products plus support for janitors’ strikes., called “SCALE.” Student protestors who “sat in” at the President’s office years back – had their parents contacted, their scholarships threatened – as the paternalistic beat went on.
The current masking of the unchanging “corporate” model of governance – one that has turned on its head the idea of protest, setting up students as pawns in reporting their professors for “infractions”, thus keeping faculty intimidated by “acronym” kangaroo courts and shocking sanctions -- and keeping the student population distracted, as all consumers are distracted, in this case, believing they are acting for social justice – as if they are protesting political wrongs, not threatening academic freedom. What if they were taught about the history of the courageous student stands in support of divestment, for which these students were beaten by security thugs?
What if they were informed about the history of. Dirty Tricks?
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Note: I had intended to make this section of Part II a narrative of my own history of protest activism at USC - and also how certain female, senior, accomplished, outspoken colleagues of mine and I came to be subjects of the Attack of the Acronyms, featuring the hired goon-interrogators and kangaroo courts in the shadow of administrative/corporate bosses and their front-facing flaks (revving up OED, OPE, CoPR plus their cooperative “snitches” at all levels) -- but I’m having trouble fitting my own smaller story into the larger issues I’ve just reviewed.
So here’s a couple “teasers”. First, my “Modest Proposal” type send-up of the hiring of celebs (coincident with the increased hiring of low-paid adjuncts) by the corporate university- as in the imagined installment of Justin Bieber as Professor? This 2014 LATimes Op Ed drew over a hundred emails from concerned faculty, staff and even administrators - all agreeing that “this university is being taken in the wrong direction”.
https://www.latimes.com/opinion/la-xpm-2014-mar-24-la-oe-muske-dukes-bieber-university-walmartization-20140325-story.htm
Another glimpse of the Attack of the Acronyms is here:
Have you had this Kafka-esque nightmare? The one where you open your door on a furtive figure who pushes a document into your hands, then disappears. You are being summoned to an “interview” about Something Wrong You’ve Done. The details are vague: something about how you’ve been using “unacceptable language”, or maybe there are complaints of harassment based on your manner of speaking. You must “appear” and respond to these accusations – though the accusations are unclear, your accusers are anonymous and will remain so (to “protect” them) -- and you must come alone to the interview: no defense for you, no lawyer allowed.
Is this for real – or is someone playing a trick on you?
It’s possible to connect the dots here – to draw a Venn diagram of the interlocking circles of Boys Club-ism to dirty trickery – that led to sexual predation and ultimately shocking university-wide scandals -- to gender discrimination in other areas, like attacks on women who “spoke out”, who broke with precedent by being fearless, kicking ass, founding programs, who were tough teachers.
But more to come, I promise. More to come.
Glad to know you'll be connecting the dots for others to see.