Good morning. It’s Tuesday, and my high school English teacher deftly rewrote yesterday’s newsletter for me. Onto the five USC, Los Angeles, and California stories you need to know for today.

1.

USC funnels the children of potential mega donors through an alternative admissions pathway meant for legitimate walk-on athletes, a sweeping investigation found. The kids were typically subpar athletes and students — but their parents cut six-figure checks. The school went to extraordinary lengths to hide the process from law enforcement.

Harriet Ryan and Matt Hamilton / Los Angeles Times

2.

IT Services said in a school-wide announcement that it’s implementing new email security protocol — in the spirit of "Cybersecurity Awareness month." Not because of this, of course. The announcement is also hilariously flagged with the very same anti-spoofing alert it's announcing.

Tomoki Chien / Morning, Trojan

3.

Riot cops clashed with a small group of UCLA students who erected a “Gaza Solidarity Sukkah” on their campus yesterday. Police detained at least one person and successfully contained a group of counter protestors, largely avoiding the mayhem of protests in the spring.

Staff / Daily Bruin

4.

AI detectors are flagging essays with a 1 to 2% false positive rate at colleges across the country, which is a remarkably high number given the sheer volume of work they see. Worse, studies show they tend to penalize students who are neurodivergent or nonnative English speakers.

Jackie Davalos and Leon Yin / Bloomberg

5.

LA City Council candidate Ysabel Jurado is taking heat after she said “Fuck the police” on tape at a meet-and-greet with college students. The controversy is somewhat ironic: Jurado is looking to unseat Kevin de León, who faced a far more infamous leaked audio controversy two years ago.

David Zahniser / Los Angeles Times