OJ can’t catch a break at USC
Tomo Chien
April 12, 2024
Good morning. It’s Friday, and I’m reading about the Los Angeles stores going big on Record Store Day. Onto the five USC, LA and California stories you need to know for today.
1.
Typically, when a Trojan football legend dies, USC issues a signature red-lettered release with carefully crafted words of condolence. No such luck for O.J. Simpson, the infamous former USC tailback who died yesterday at age 76 from cancer. USC’s silence in Simpson’s passing underscored, perhaps for the final time, the university’s fraught relationship with its alum ever since his murder trial. By the way: Here’s the best Simpson meme I saw yesterday.
2.
Pro-Palestinian protests are once again roiling California college campuses. At the elite Claremont Colleges in LA County, 20 students were arrested last week after storming and occupying a university president’s office. Students have since staged more protests. At UC Berkeley, a video of a professor trying to grab the microphone of a pro-Palestinian protester disrupting an invite-only backyard dinner went viral earlier this week. The protester claims the incident was “clear Islamophobia” and assault.
3.
California lawmakers agreed to cut $17 billion from the state’s budget — less than a quarter of what the state must ax to rectify its estimated $73 billion shortfall. The agreement slashes hundreds of millions of dollars from welfare, climate and infrastructure programs, including $300 million for a new facility at UCLA. But other parts of the plan employ sly accounting tricks: like delaying $1.6 billion in state payroll by just one day, so it technically falls in the next fiscal year. One Republican called it the “mother of all gimmicks.”
4.
Public universities in California are required to offer students medication abortions, but their costs vary vastly across campuses. At some California State University campuses, the medication is free while supplies last. Others highly subsidize the costs of the pill and don’t charge for appointments. Meanwhile, University of California schools leave any student not on the university insurance program — including those with the low-income state-sponsored MediCal — with a bill that reaches into the hundreds of dollars.
5.
Two Bay Area airports are gearing up for an all-out war. Oakland’s airport — formerly called the Metropolitan Oakland International Airport — just renamed itself the San Francisco Bay Oakland International Airport, hoping to highlight the fact that it’s in the Bay Area and bring in more traffic. But the San Francisco International Airport is irate. The name swap, officials say, is trademark infringement and will confuse foreign travelers. San Francisco’s city attorney says his office will sue.
