Good morning. It’s Friday, and we’re giving out free money. Kind of. You can read more at the bottom of this email, but when your friends subscribe to Morning, Trojan via your custom signup link, we’ll send you gift cards — including $50 at the USC Bookstore.

Some ideas: Text them. Forward this email with your custom link attached. Send to your club Slack workspaces. Make a QR code and show it to your classmates. Force everybody who rushes your house to subscribe. (Don’t actually do that.) I will begrudgingly honor the milestones when you refer one of your other emails.

But enough already! Check out this hilarious Los Angeles Magazine story on Pete Caroll from 2007. Now, onto the five USC, Los Angeles and California stories you need to know for today.

1.

Grizzly bears have a homicidal reputation. An 1898 San Francisco newspaper alleged that one bear broke into a pigpen and “sat him down in the midst of the squealing porkers until his belly was made full,” then kidnapped a Native American infant in a papoose. That, no doubt, is in part what led Californians to hunt the bears to extinction by 1924. But, it turns out, it’s probably our fault. A new study found that grizzlies were around 90% vegan before Europeans colonized the West, and that the introduction of livestock is probably what encouraged them to start eating more meat.

Katherine J. Wu / The Atlantic

2.

A second avalanche hit a Lake Tahoe ski resort on Thursday, just a day after another avalanche on an adjoining mountain killed one person. Nobody was hurt in Thursday’s slide. For what it’s worth, avalanches at ski resorts are fairly rare: Just 3% of the 244 avalanche deaths in the U.S. over the last decade have been on maintained resort trails. Backcountry skiers, who fly down remote mountains, run the highest risk.

Scott Sonner and Christopher Weber / Associated Press

3.

Former LA County Sheriff Alex Villanueva is set to testify before an oversight commission about deputy gangs this morning. Villanueva has long denied that gangs — secretive groups of tattooed officers accused of valorizing violence with things like “shooting parties” after officers fire on unarmed civilians — exist in the department. The embattled former sheriff’s testimony is timely: Reports this week confirmed the existence of a previously unknown gang and revealed a coverup in an incident where an officer shot off another deputy’s tattoo.

Makenna Sievertson and Frank Stoltze / LAist

4.

USC said it won’t accept any new registered student organizations this semester, an effort to ensure existing clubs are “supported” and “fulfilling the important role they play” on campus. RSOs, which are essentially university-sanctioned clubs, can receive school funding, meet in USC classrooms for free and set up stands at involvement fairs. Students were quick to criticize the university for what they characterized as a lack of transparency and a bureaucratic process. 

Max Rubenstein / Daily Trojan

5.

Angelenos who received $1,000 dollars a month as part of the city’s guaranteed income pilot program reported getting “a huge part of my life back,” the chance to invest in their small businesses and seeing “a little bit of light up ahead.” Experts say that similar programs across the country have seen positive effects for participants — even after the programs end. The pilots are “indicating pretty uniformly positive impacts on health, belonging, self-worth, among other outcomes,” one expert said.

Rebecca Plevin / Los Angeles Times

Anna Hsu copy edited this newsletter.

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