Monday, March 1, 2021 | STUDENT NEWSPAPER OF THE UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA SINCE 1912 | VOL. 202, NO. 11

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Southern California Moot Court to offer class credit

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By LaUrEncE TarQUInIoStaff Writer

In just a matter of months, Harmon Gill went from not knowing a lot about moot court competitions to co-founding USC’s chapter and leading a team to qualify for national tourna-ments.

The Southern California Moot Court, founded in Fall 2019, has already accomplished many feats, such as two 3rd place fin-ishes at the American Moot Court Association National Tournament. In addition to the skills and experiences that SCMC provides its members as under-graduates, students can now also participate in SCMC while earn-ing college credit through the new WRIT 340 moot court sec-tion and a writing elective WRIT 499 “Practical Argumentation.” Thanks to writing deparment Professor Antonio Elefano, stu-dents can earn credit for a re-quired writing class, while rep-resenting USC in competition at the same time.

“Universities exist to sup-port students so when students formed this organization. They built it from the ground up and then they raised it to greatness,” Elefano said. “I viewed it as my responsibility and USC’s respon-sibility to support it.”

While Elefano’s former stu-dents were busy preparing for their 2020 tournament season, he went to the writing program cur-riculum committee with a pitch.

“I teach legal writing classes at USC,” Elefano said. “The prin-ciples of moot court are exactly the same skills that I teach in my legal writing classes already. The only [differences are] that in my

legal writing classes that I cur-rently teach right now, I make up the fact patterns, and I choose the case law.”

The fairly new organization has grown significantly from its founding four members to a cur-rent team of 24. Vibhav Laud, a freshman majoring in biochem-istry, placed second best speaker overall in the Western Region out of 60 speakers. Laud and his part-ner also made it to the American Moot Court Association National Tournament where they lost to the No. 1 seed in the sweet 16.

Trojans avenged fellow Trojans in that tournament where Gill, a senior majoring in communica-tions, placed 3rd in the nation for the second year in a row. Gill had planned to not compete and sole-ly serve as a leader and coach, but when another member could not compete at the last minute, Gill stepped in.

“That’s the only way leadership works, you have got to put the ego aside … this is bigger than me. This is about teaching, and imparting a set of skills, giving folks a toolbox to be able to learn about the law,” Gill said. “That is far too important, and I am invest-ed in making sure [that] the organiza-tion is right and we have the structures in place, the cur-riculum in place, and everything else right to support our organization. I hope this tradition of excellence con-tinues on for years to come.”

Gill said he believes in the im-portance of making sure SCMC is a part of USC for good as he con-siders it to be one of the best op-portunities for pre-law students. According to their website, moot

court provides students an edge in law school admissions, law school, legal practice and even public

speaking and legal advocacy.“We teach you how to think like

a lawyer, how to write like a law-yer and how to argue like a law-yer,” Gill said. “We teach you how to analyze a legal problem and

how to pick apart arguments … from writing the actual legal brief to training for oral argument we

teach you how to be an effective ad-vocate in front of a panel of judges.”

SCMC is not only for pre-law students — many students of varying majors and career plans have participated. SCMC Secretary Maya Fransz-Myers, a senior majoring in political economy, said she isn’t plan-

ning to go to law school.“I think it is ironic because

I am a part of so many pre-law organizations … but I am actu-ally not planning to go to law school, at least not immediately,”

Fransz-Myers said.Regardless of your current ma-

jor or future goals, Moot Court teaches invaluable skills that are useful to anybody, she said.

“I would say it is for everybody … everyone can benefit from pub-lic speaking and you would be surprised how the skills acquired in Moot Court translate to al-most every aspect in your life,” Fransz-Myers said.

As agreed upon by Laud and Fransz-Myers, one of the best parts of SCMC are the new friends and memories they made through the club.

“It sounds cliche, but I think my favorite thing is the friends I’ve made in moot court,” Fransz-Myers said. “As a senior looking back now, moot court was where I really met a lot of people that I talked to con-sistently.”

Founded in 2019, the group equips members with public speaking and legal skills.

ana Mata | Daily Trojan

Southern California Moot Court, created in Fall 2019 by its four founding members, has grown to a team of 24 and will soon be offered as a writing class for USC undergraduates.

“We teach you how to analyze a legal problem and how to pick apart arguments … from writing the actual legal brief to training for oral argument, we teach you how to be an

effective advocate in front of a panel of judges”· · ·

HARMON GILLCo-founder of Southern California’s Moot Court chapter

PaGE 2 M a r c h 1 , 2 0 2 1 | W W W . d a I Ly T r o J a n . c o M NEWS

By VIcTorIa VaLEnZUELaStaff Writer

In response to the Black Lives Matter protests last summer fol-lowing the deaths of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor, the pandemic disproportionately affecting com-munities based on their race and economic status, and voter disen-franchisement leading up to the election, Camille Gear Rich wrote a memo proposing a mandatory “Race, Racism and the Law” course at the USC Gould School of Law.

Rich, a Gould professor of Law and Sociology, said she felt stu-dents would benefit from a better understanding of historical con-versations about race and the law, and an opportunity to consider the contemporary effects of exclu-sion and marginalization.

“Lawyers have a great deal of responsibility in structuring fair and honest arrangements in soci-ety,” Rich said. “When we decline to provide students with an oppor-tunity to talk about race, they can develop a tunnel vision that makes them unable to properly serve

their clients and, more broadly, to serve the cause of justice.”

Following phone calls with fac-ulty, more drafts of the memo, and many subcommittee meetings, the course is expected to launch next spring and will be mandatory for all students, beginning with the Class of 2024.

“My colleagues and I believe that the law school has an obliga-tion to do more for our students in terms of preparing them for the legal world, in which they may en-counter issues of race and racism that affect their ability to prac-tice law and also affect the lives of their clients,” said Vice Dean for Faculty and Academic Affairs Franita Tolson, one of the chair-persons of the subcommittee that developed the course.

Tolson said that she hopes this course will allow law students to confront issues about race and the law openly. While the law school already offers courses on race such as “Racial Ambiguity Blues” and “Critical Race Theory,” the “Race, Racism and the Law” course is the first to be offered as a requirement for graduation. Additionally, Tolson said the “Race, Racism and the Law” course takes a broader sur-vey approach, as opposed to the

specific and specialized cours-es offered in the past. The course will be offered for the first time in Spring 2022.

“We think it’s important for our students to understand all di-mensions of racial issues, as op-posed to just a specialized focus offered in some of the courses that

we have in our curriculum now,” Tolson said.

According to Tolson, student in-volvement was key in the creation of this course. Martina Fouquet, a second-year law student and the student representative on the subcommittee tasked with estab-lishing the “Race, Racism and the

Gould School of Law creates new race and law courseGould is the first Top 25 law school to require a course on race and the law.

Law” course, was able to speak with her peers and colleagues and gather a sense of support among the student body.

“A lot of law students can grad-uate law school with no context whatsoever as to how race and rac-ism affects the application of law,” Fouquet said. “The course is used as a way to ensure that, on top of our doctrinal courses that we are all getting, we are also getting substantive knowledge and un-derstanding of how race and rac-ism affect the application of the law.”

Fouquet said she believes much of the law school curriculum in-volves courses on passing the bar exam. She hopes the “Race, Racism and the Law” requirement will lead students to apply the law in a way that will lead to adequate ad-dressing of racial issues, regard-less of the industry or practice law students go into.

“It’s sometimes unfortunate that while we might be prepared to pass the bar [exam], we might not be fully informed of how to re-ally affect change in our societies, which I think is one of the biggest motivations for people coming to law school,” Fouquet said.

With USC Gould being the first Top 25 law school in the coun-try to implement a requirement of this sort, Rich said she believes the course will attract and inspire students committed to racial jus-tice and fairness and share an un-derstanding of the consequences racism has had for the structure of American democracy.

“We felt that this foundation-al, cohesive course really pro-vides an opportunity to compare the treatment of different racial groups across time and would re-ally be a signature part of the USC education and a sign of our com-mitment to intelligently, mean-ingfully and rigorously discuss-ing topics of race in the years to come,” Rich said.

As a trailblazer on implementing the race and law course requirement, Tolson said she hopes other schools follow suit and that the course nor-malizes discussions about race as a society.

“I think we have so much poten-tial to do so many great things,” Tolson said. “It reflects well on this University where we are relative to our peers. We’re taking a leading role in this, influencing other schools to follow suit. We’ve heard from a num-ber of other institutions who are also looking at instituting this type of class, and so it feels really, really good to be a trailblazer on this be-cause it’s a really important issue.”

Vincent Leo | Daily Trojan

The “Race, Racism and the Law” course was created by students and faculty following the events of last summer, such as the Black Lives Matter. movement, and seeks to help students understand the complexity of race in America.

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VOLUME 202, NUMBER 11

Our parents had Picassos, and we have the Nyan Cat.

For those who are not well-versed in memes, “Nyan Cat” is an old-school viral video from 2011 with 185 million views on Youtube. The video is three min-utes and thirty seven seconds of an animated cat with a pop-tart body flying through outer space, farting a rainbow that streaks the star-ry sky behind it as a high-pitched voice sings the words “nyan nyan nyan” in the background.

While you may not agree that this piece is worthy of being dubbed as high art, it was recently sold for roughly $600,000.

I’ve seen people all over the in-ternet meet this price tag with hesitation, claiming that it is fool-ish to pay exorbitant prices for something that can already be ac-cessed for free via the internet.

The key to the value of these cultural artifacts is authenticity. The Mona Lisa can be accessed for free via the internet by all, yet

ownership of the authentic origi-nal still maintains a high value. This is because there are ways that we can authenticate the Mona Lisa as a painting that was created by Leonardo Da Vinci likely around 1503. And now, there are ways to authenticate that the $600,000 digital file containing the Nyan Cat video was the one created by Chris Torres in 2011.

The process of authenticating a digital file is commonly referred to as “minting.” More specifi-cally, it is the process of creat-ing a non-fungible token, or an NFT. To mint a file, creators sim-ply need to upload their file to a minting platform and follow the steps from there. There are various types of minting platforms rang-ing from ones accessible to all, like Rarible and Opensea, as well as more exclusive ones that require membership on the platform, like SuperRare. Once a creator mints their file, an NFT is created.

An NFT is a type of digital as-set that is entirely unique from any other digital file. No two NFTs are the same. These one-of-one tokens are hosted on a block-chain network. The blockchain network affords this asset with the ability to be traced down the chain of ownership all the way

back to the original creator. This technology has opened

the door to an entire marketplace for rare digital collectibles that can now be reliably verified and authenticated. A popular exam-ple of the explosive potential for this market is NBA Topshot, an NFT collection of minted sports-highlights that has generated over $205 million in less than six months.

The ramifications of this kind of technology are innumerable, but sitting pretty at the top of this long list for all of us Reddit brows-ers, TikTok dwellers and Vine vet-erans are the consequences this technology has on memes.

We could never own memes before. They were digital files born and bred on the internet, and until NFTs officially entered the chat, they could not be authenticated. They existed equally on everyone’s devices. Now, the original meme file can be minted by its creator and reign supreme as the real version (though copies of the file can still circulate the internet infinitely).

I wonder what ramifications the potential for ownership of memes will have on internet cul-ture. On the one hand, I am ex-cited at the idea of meme creators

getting compensated for their contributions to popular culture. Memes have definitely improved my life more than any million dol-lar Banksy piece has. I’d love to see the art market reflect and reward that value.

On the other hand, we saw the profession title of “influencer” rot the internet from the inside out.

Platforms that used to be re-served for non-monetizable, au-thentic and creative expression in the golden age of the inter-net quickly became fronts for in-fluencer merch brands and kid-friendly corporate sponsorships (@ YouTube) in the span of the 10 years, after becoming viable sourc-es of income for creators. Will the potential professional title of “meme artist” similarly rot meme culture from the inside out over the next 10 years?

Moreover, now that there’s po-tentially real money on the line, are boomers and big time establish-ments going to invade and corrupt happy-fun memeland?

Regardless of what lies in the future of the beloved meme, the fact is significant value exists in its present moment. Being meme savvy made some Reddit users a few dollars during the now-famous Gamestop short-squeeze event

earlier in January. Likewise, being meme-savvy might be able to make some people a few dollars on the emerging NFT market in the same way that being art-savvy has made people millions over the last few centuries.

This is not intended as a form of financial advice, but rather, a call to young readers to keep their eyes peeled for ways they can capitalize on any extensive knowledge they may have on meme-culture before the establishments do.

The power of memes have al-ready begun to be usurped by peo-ple who are not children of the in-ternet. Mainstream news outlets like Bloomberg have been decod-ing the meme language used on r/Wallstreetbets, and memes have begun selling for $600,000 — far beyond the budget of most young memesters.

Pay attention to what’s going on in the memeworld, and capitalize on the leg up we have on the older generation. Remember, they merely adopted the meme. We were born in it, moulded by it.

Julia Leb is a junior writing about philosophy, politics and social is-

sues. Her column, “The Principle’s Office,” runs every other Monday.

Memes are putting the ‘ fun’ in non-fungible-tokensJuliaLebTHE PRINCIPLE ’S OFFICE

By MyrIaM aLcaLaDiversity & Inculsion Director

Throughout history, newspa-pers have villainized social jus-tice movements. There was a time where papers were run by wealthy white men, thus it made sense that the stories in the paper would be against movements supporting women’s suffrage, immigration rights and labor unions. Even today there is a clear bias — both intention-al and unintentional — towards social justice.

In regards to the history of news villainization, the women’s suf-frage movement in the 19th cen-tury proved to be one of the most notable. Much of the coverage sur-rounding these women was nega-tive and hostile, and the same can be said for the coverage surround-ing Martin Luther King Jr. and the Civil Rights Movement in the ’60s. In the 21st century, it may be easy to think that this cycle of delegiti-mizing movements and issues has stopped, but that is not the case.

During the summer demon-strations of Black Lives Matter, the media coverage continued

the cyclical norm of bad coverage. There was clear perpetuation of an elitist point of view, where some media outlets would opt to inter-view the people in power (sena-tors, police officers, etc.) instead of the protesters on the ground. Media outlets also failed to frame BLM outside of the protests, since much of the coverage was on what happened on the streets rather than the overall message of the movement.

Additionally, the focus on the small groups of violence served as a catalyst for the criminalization and delegitimization of the entire movement. Violence tended to be incited by small groups or police and their blunt force during the peaceful demonstrations; howev-er, most outlets equated all the vi-olence and suggested that it was a result of BLM.

Not only do these practices dele-gitimize an important movement that is raising key issues, they con-tinue a cycle of antagonization of movements that has been present throughout the history of journal-ism.

This cycle also goes beyond movement and tends to be com-mon practice when covering social justice issues in general. For ex-ample, during the mass migration movements from East Europe in

the 19th century, media outlets per-petuated anti-immigrant language in their papers that reinforced ste-reotypes of these groups. Today, a similar practice of language is used to report police shootings of Black citizens. Instead of calling it for what it is, many outlets opt to use nuanced phrases like “officer-involved shooting” to protect the group in power and continue to dismiss this social justice issue of police brutality.

Media outlets continue to cre-ate harmful narratives and dele-gitimize the message of social jus-tice issues and mass movements. The first step in breaking this an-tiquated cycle is to recognize the harm done by journalists and rec-ognize the problems in media practices in the past in order to point them out in coverage today. Only then will media outlets be able to produce accurate and ethi-cal coverage.

Journalism history can be taught through a formal educa-tion, such as the curriculum at the USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism, or it could be self taught. This type of curriculum can mim-ic a course already taught at USC titled “Culture of Journalism: Past, Present and Future,” where the class began by looking at

individual coverage of movements like women’s rights, immigration and labor union movements and analyzed how the media portrayed said groups.

In addition to this structure, the curriculum could include a more immersive look at the specific lan-guage media outlets have used in the past and measure their impact on things like social justice; identi-fying these problems and patterns in history and today is the key to stopping them.

It is also important to do this work at the school newspaper

level. At the Daily Trojan, report-ers should begin to pick out meth-ods that antagonize social justice issues and movements and work to halt them, making it a norm for fu-ture journalists. This type of work can be done with the help of a di-versity and inclusion department that leads training on media bias and journalism complicity in this villainization of social justice.

Learning about these issues via an educational process and prac-tice in the realm of student publi-cations is the key to ensuring this cycle of villainization stops.

Journalism schools should work to recognize the past and break the cycle.

Social justice is historically villainized by newsrooms

Photo courtesy of Life Matters via Pexels

Media coverage of the Black Lives Matter movement and other movements in the past often antagonizes social justice issues.

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‘Minor Feelings’ offers the radicalization that Americans need

Cathy Park Hong’s newest book, “Minor Feelings: An Asian American Reckoning,” was released in Feb. 2020. It is very likely you have not heard of it.

Despite 2020 being popularly characterized as the United States’s year of “racial reckoning,” Hong’s book received little fanfare outside of Asian America communities. Hong was not invited to speak on The New York Times Book Review’s podcast. I have yet to hear or see a single person, again — except for a few Asian Americans — recommend, refer to, or even demonstrate that they are aware of the book’s existence.

This is one of the reasons “Minor Feelings” is so painfully essential today. During the United States’ supposed year of “racial reckoning,” Hong’s book, and the dearth of attention it has received from non-Asian America, offers a treatise on the country’s galling ignorance and shows how far the nation still has to go before it ever approaches anything resembling a true, “racial reckoning.”

The book is an amalgam of literary forms and genres — part

cultural criticism, part memoir and part history. One could also accurately consider it a collection of essays. Chapter to chapter, Hong tackles myriad of topics, from personal subjects such as her family and upbringing in Koreatown, her life in college and her experiences as an Asian American poet and professor, to historical and cultural subjects such as the 1992 Los Angeles riots, Hollywood’s centuries-long tradition of dehumanizing minority groups and the consequences of American imperialism and exploitation overseas.

Clearly, what Hong chooses to address in “Minor Feelings’’ is diverse and at times, seemingly disparate. However, Hong deftly manages and transitions between the scores of subjects she addresses in a way that is not only illuminating, but also sincerely beautiful to read.

Still, it is not only Hong’s command of prose that unifies “Minor Feelings,” it is how Hong captures, in a form that is haltingly unapologetic and redemptively accurate, what it often means to be Asian American.

“You don’t like how you look, how you sound,” Hong writes. “You think your Asian features are undefined, like God started pinching out your features and then abandoned you. You hate that there are so many Asians in the room. Who let in all

the Asians? You rant in your head.”To be Asian American, Hong

explains, is to inhabit a “vague purgatorial status.” It is to be “distrusted by African Americans, ignored by whites, unless we’re being used by whites to keep the Black man down.” It is to be conditioned by society to believe that your features are inherently undesirable, to be taught your ancestors’ history is only relevant when they’re being shot or bombed by Americans and to scream into an empty void that you are in pain — a pain built, as Hong puts it, from “the sediments of everyday racial experience and the irritant of having one’s perception of reality constantly questioned or dismissed,” — only to be met by a deafening silence.

Hong is also unrelentingly clear-eyed in her evisceration of the lies, traps and societal cages that have long-stymied her voice, and Asian American voices like it, from being heard.

“The indignity of being Asian in this country has been underreported,” Hong writes. “We have been cowed by the lie that we have it good. We keep our heads down and work hard, believing that our diligence will reward us with our dignity, but our diligence will only make us disappear [...] the lie that Asians have it good is so insidious that even now as I write, I’m shadowed by doubt that I didn’t have it bad compared to others. But racial

trauma is not a competitive sport.”However, if racial trauma is

doomed to remain one by the societal forces that be, “Minor Feelings” makes clear that it is past time America recognizes that Asian Americans are at the very least, on the scoreboard. What with the 19th century anti-Chinese campaigns in which Chinese immigrants couldn’t even leave their homes without being “spat at, clubbed [...] shot in the back” or lynched; violence and hate crimes that persist and increase to this day, and both a society and popular culture that has engendered crippling, unconscious self-contempt within innumerable Asian Americans.

It is in this context that “Minor

Feelings” is a radicalizing experience. Hong’s book gives a language to the ostracization, self-hatred and unheard rage of many in the Asian American community, but it does so without falling victim to self-flagellation or fetishizing the suffering. Instead, Hong’s book is freeing in many respects, because to read and have articulated one’s lived experience is not necessarily to be weighed down by it, but, as in the case of “Minor Feelings,” it is to be liberated from it.

Stuart Carson is a senior writing about political literature. He is also

an associate managing editor of the Daily Trojan. His column, “Politics

and Prose,” runs every other Monday.

Prolific music industry players share their experiences

By SaManTha STEWarTAssistant Arts & Entertainment Editor

The Zoom webinar bubbled with excitement as the USC Concerts Committee and Black Student Assembly introduced the star-stud-ded panelists for “Soul, Stars and Success: The Motown Story,” on Feb. 26.

The event featured prolific speak-ers from across the music industry. President of Motown Records and Executive Vice President of Capitol Music Group Ethiopia Habtemariam, Motown Records recording artist Asiahn and executives from the label, management and publishing com-pany, Since the 80s, appeared as fea-tured panelists.

Taj Mayfield, a junior majoring in journalism, moderated the event and began by introducing Debra Lee, for-mer chief executive officer of BET Networks. Lee introduced the Quinn Coleman Memorial Fund, a collabora-tion with the GRAMMY Museum to raise money to fund internships and uplift up and coming executives of color, which is in honor of her son who passed away last August. Coleman was an executive and DJ with a pas-sion for music.

“Soul, Stars and Success: The Motown Story” was the first official function to raise money for the ef-fort. Donating to the fund entered at-tendees into a raffle where they could win two tickets to the inaugural Black Music Collective Grammy Week Event, an Echo Dot, an Amazon gift card or a one on one with Universal Music Group’s °1824 providing tips on getting into the music industry.

Themes of entrepreneurship underpinned the conversation throughout the evening.

In the face of a changing music landscape where streaming became the status quo, Habtemariam stressed

the importance of returning to the values Motown started with.

“So it was about artist develop-ment, which is something all of us on this panel believe in, but also was about supporting other entrepreneurs that lived and breathed in the same spirit of what Berry Gordy created back then” Habtemariam said.

Later in the night she highlighted the significance of work ethic for peo-ple in the music industry in any ca-pacity.

“You will be surprised,” Habtemariam said. “Some of the big-gest superstars, the ones that really reach a certain level of success, the work ethic is so incredible. And so, in order to make it whether it’s as an art-ist as a creator or as an executive as an entrepreneur. Your work ethic is everything.”

Asiahn demonstrated this spirit

of work ethic as she described her ex-perience making her first project, her debut EP “Love Train.”

“I recorded my entire project, my first one and [most of my second one] in my house, by myself,” Asiahn said.

She described the process of hav-ing her producer send her some tracks and recorded, mixed, did all of her photoshoots by herself.

Another focus of the night was maintaining integrity. Asiahn de-scribed her experience releasing her own music after being more behind the scenes as a songwriter for other acts.

“I released ‘Love Train,’ my EP, first by myself just to see if I had a place in music coming from the perspective of a Black LGBTQ artist,” Asiahn said.

Asiahn provided a moment of lev-ity when she addressed how impor-tant it is to stay true to yourself and

not follow trends just because they are popular.

“I find that you know, I’m not the biggest TikToker,” Asiahn said. “I’m not finna do all them dances. I can try, but I might look like a fool. Like I tried to do the Megan one, but I don’t got Megan knees. So that didn’t work for me.

Asiahn continued on to stress that regardless of your message, someone, somewhere will appreciate what you have to say.

“I just know what stories I want to tell. I tell the stories I feel like music is missing. And to be true to yourself and tell your own stories you have to know that there’s billions of people in the world, and so somebody is go-ing to resonate with what you have to say.”

She continued saying “Don’t try to follow the trends, don’t try to follow

what everyone else is doing. Know who you are and stick with that. And be unapologetic about it. Be authentic about it.”

Another memorable moment dur-ing the conversation were the pan-elists’, in particular Since the 80s, response to feelings of imposter syn-drome.

Barry Johnson and Zekiel Nicholson, two of three founders of the label, management and publish-ing company, Since the 80s, claimed their environment ensured they were aware of their talents and worth.

“What’s that?” Johnson said.“We’re around family at the end of

the day. So at no point in our progres-sion as a label or as executives [have I] felt that sense of imposter syndrome personally,” Nicholson said.

Johnson continued that working with other Black creators created a comfortable environment where he didn’t feel inadequate.

Habtemariam said her experience becoming president of Motown Records was the only time she had to reckon with imposter syndrome. As president, Habtemariam would find herself as the only Black person at a table of executives and would have to shoulder the responsibility of representing and speaking for not only herself, but a community of people, leading her to wonder if she was capable of it.

She credited having the responsi-bility to pave the way for other exec-utives of color for breaking her out of that mindset.

“There were times where it was a little [heavy] for me,” Habtemariam said. “And then I was like, oh no, this is a bigger mission, this is a bigger purpose. Because if I’m the only one in the room, I got to make sure there are more of us in the room. I got to make sure that this never happens again where you feel like you have to con-vince people [of the] value of our mu-sic or the talent that comes from the space that we’re from or people that look like me.”

Kayla hill | Daily Trojan

Successful figures in the music industry shared their advice for Black creatives during the Friday evening webinar.

To these music industry veterans, work ethic and integrity create success.

Photo from @cathyparkhong on Instagram

Cathy Park Hong’s novel received little national attention despite its release during the supposed year of the United States’ “racial reckoning.”

Stuart CarsonPOLIT ICSAND PROSE

M a r c h 1 , 2 0 2 1 | W W W . d a I Ly T r o J a n . c o MA & E PaGE 5

By FITZ caInStaff Writer

Producer Danny L Harle has never been a fan of minimalism. This has never been truer than on his debut album “Harlecore,” a high-concept, euphoric trip to an alternate dimension where dance music reigns and a boun-cy blue man with big white eyes does DJ sets surrounded by f loat-ing springs.

The bouncy blue man in ques-tion — MC Boing — is one of four resident DJs in Harle’s fic-tional night club, Club Harlecore. Alongside “Harlecore’s” release, Harle debuted an interactive website that allows fans to enter Club Harlecore and watch each of its resident DJs perform songs from the album. The rest of Club Harlecore’s cast is made up of a giant green jellyfish (DJ Ocean), a destructive fiery canine (DJ Mayhem) and Harle’s own DJ per-sona, shown on the album cover as a metallic maestro at the front of the whole project (DJ Danny).

In addition to being present in the album art, music videos and on the interactive Club Harlecore site, each of these four fictional DJs is credited alongside Harle in the album’s tracklist. While the credited DJ on a given song helps signify some of Harle’s collabo-rators, this tactic also effectively breaks up the tracklist into four subcategories.

Harle is a founding member of London-based record label and music collective PC Music, a label that, since its inception in 2013, has garnered attention for its hyper-glossy, futuristic take on

pop music that exaggerates pop tropes to their extreme. While Harle’s PC Music peers like A.G. Cook and the late SOPHIE seek to push pop to its limit, Harle instead marries the experimentalism of PC Music with elements of more mainstream dance music, also pulling inf luences from dance sub-genres like ’90s rave and Eurodance.

While the concept and inf lu-ences behind “Harlecore” are complex, its mission is simple: to provide the most transcendent, blissful listening experience pos-sible. And for the most part, it achieves this goal — even if the high ultimately wears off.

“Harlecore’s” greatest strength lies in its singles. Although the album missteps slightly with opener “Where Are You Now,” a high-energy but unremarkable dance cut that feels watered-down by Harle’s standards, it recovers with the following four tracks: all released before the album and each spotlighting a different one of Club Harlecore’s DJ personas.

The first, “Boing Beat,” is a much more worthy album opener than its predecessor. In just one minute and 33 seconds, “Boing Beat” combines the fictional MC Boing’s grating, Crazy-Frog-esque chants with PC Music staple Hannah Diamond’s pristine and angelic vocal melodies. It’s a dis-orienting experience, but that’s intentional: Harle throws con-f licting elements together and shakes them up until they ex-plode in your face.

Harle continues strong with “Interlocked,” which starts as a glittery pop tune and morphs into a bass-heavy banger. If Club Harlecore was a real place, “Interlocked” would have the building supports shaking.

“Ocean’s Theme” is an ambi-ent siren song and nice change

of pace featuring enchanting vo-cals from frequent Harle collab-orator Caroline Polachek. “On A Mountain,” the album’s lead sin-gle, is a euphoric dance anthem about finding someone else who is just as heartbroken as you: “We can lay here on a mountain, me and you / Can you feel it? This is something new / I can see your heart’s been broken too.”

All four tracks are enveloping and transportive, carrying the lis-tener further into Harle’s surreal world and showcasing just how versatile Harle is.

Here, however, is where “Harlecore” begins to falter.

While none of the remaining tracks are bad, most don’t bring anything truly new or excit-ing to the table. Apart from the

particularly PC-Music-inspired “All Night” and the anthemic “Take My Heart Away,” the al-bum stays frustratingly within the sonic realm established by its singles. Although cycling through sounds and DJ personas makes the album’s first leg exhilarating, Harle shows his cards a bit too quickly.

“Piano Song” and “Car Song” harken back to the delectable cha-os of “Boing Beat” but fall short by comparison, especially since the novelty of MC Boing’s bizarre delivery has worn off. “Do You Remember” and “Shining Stars” are fun but empty. Harle takes all his risks right off the bat then doesn’t dare to venture further.

But even if “Harlecore’s” mag-ic wears off before its run time

is over, it’s hard to fault an album that has so much fun along the way. Harle doesn’t take himself too seriously — for proof, look no fur-ther than his brief, cheeky tweets.

Lyrics are simple and repetitive, their primary purpose being to accompany Harle’s intricate production. Sentiments never get much deeper than “I want you all night” or “‘Cause we’re shining stars tonight,” but they don’t need to. “Harlecore” is here to capture the in-the-moment feeling of a night on the dance floor and transport listeners into Harle’s fantasy.

So although our legs start to get tired by the end of the night, “Harlecore’s” commitment to es-capism and its immersive uni-verse is enough to keep us dancing through it all.

‘Harlecore’ projects its listeners into an alternate dimensionREVIEW

HARLECORE

MUSIc

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Photo from @dannylharle on Twitter.Producer Danny L Harle released 13 trippy and transportive tracks as part of his debut album “Harlecore.”

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SUDOKU | Look for puzzles in each edition of the Daily Trojan

7 5 3 4

1 5 2

7 6

2 5 4 7 8

1 5

5 8 6 9 3

2 5

7 2 3

3 1 2 7

Puzzle 1 (Hard, difficulty rating 0.69)

Generated by http://www.opensky.ca/sudoku on Sun Feb 28 07:50:58 2021 GMT. Enjoy!

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M a r c h 1 , 2 0 2 1 | W W W . d a I Ly T r o J a n . c o M PaGE 7SPORTS

coach Andy Enfield said. “It was our worst half probably all season.”

Not many positives can be drawn from this loss to a Utah team that was riding four-straight losses coming in. USC’s starting five combined to shoot just over 31% from the field against the Utes, who are currently a sub .500 team.

The offensive side of the bas-ketball has been the biggest ques-tion mark for this Trojan squad all season. Against Utah on Jan. 2, freshman forward Evan Mobley put up three points without at-tempting a single shot throughout the game. In USC’s second meet-ing against the Utes, Mobley fin-ished with just 11 points going 2-7 from the field, numbers far below the star’s average.

Mobley’s scoring in the post and unique agility make him an important asset to this team’s of-fense, but such contributions dis-appeared for stretches through-out the game. As a force down low able to get easy buckets, this USC squad goes as far as Mobley takes them.

With Mobley’s offensive falter-ing, the Trojans forced kickouts to perimeter players. Against a Utes team that was shooting 60% from behind the arc, USC stood no chance of winning the 3-point

matchup. The Trojans currently rank No. 10 in the Pac-12 in both 3-point attempts and 3-pointers made.

When the Trojans were in need of someone to take the reins and drag them back into the game, ju-nior guard Drew Peterson did his best to steady the ship. He put up a team-high 19 points going 8-15, but it wasn’t enough to combat the team’s overall horrid shooting and lackluster ball handling with 13 turnovers.

“You just have to play better. There’s no excuses,” Enfield said. “If you want to win Pac-12 games on the road, you can’t play like that. It’s not efficient basketball, and it’s not good enough.”

Despite the Trojans offensive woes throughout the season, they didn’t just stumble into a 19-6 re-cord by chance. They earned it on the defensive side of the ball, boasting a top-20 field goal per-centage defense in the NCAA.

The disciplined, smothering defense fans are accustomed to seeing from Trojans was absent in the second half, as the Utes put up 44 points on 59% shooting and a scorching hot 7-9 from beyond the 3-point line on a number of un-contested looks.

The Trojans held junior forward Timmy Allen to 2-14 shooting in their previous meeting, but Allen

looked determined to prove that result as an outlier. He looked com-fortable on the floor against USC, scoring 15 points while dishing out eight assists, dominating as a floor general through the second half.

While three losses in four games would have put USC out of the race for a possible eighth conference ti-tle, UCLA’s 70-61 loss to Colorado keeps the Trojans alive.

USC hosts Stanford at Galen on

March 3. Tip-off is at 7:30 p.m. A win against the Cardinals coupled with a UCLA win against Oregon would result in a conference-title matchup on March 6.

MBB | USC’s shooting struggles plagues team on the road against Utah| continued from page 10 |

Simon Park | Daily Trojan

Junior guard Drew Peterson lead the Trojans’ offense with 19 points on Saturday. The sharp-shooter has been a key asset lately for USC, scoring double digits in three of their past five games.

greatest team. It was the story of the characters who somehow had to come together to earn that ti-tle with Jordan at the center. Through the ingenious interview technique where Jordan himself viewed other interview subjects’ footage, we got real reactions that showed a glimpse of the grudges he held. We took it as personally as Jordan did, and that’s the beau-ty of this type of dive into the re-ality of sports.

I wouldn’t say it’s “muck-rack-ing” investigative work. Rather, it’s an instructive piece of sports media with a storyline meant for broader audiences.

In an age where live sports cov-erage has invaded every centime-ter of live game coverage from the locker room to the mic’d up side-lines, sports documentaries and cinematic pieces still provide a realer sense of athletes themselves. Filmmakers can take time with their subjects and with the vast

archive of such documentation of athletes and reinvent the narrative beyond the day-to-day headlines.

The result is something more real than what a game recap can offer. The audience’s takeaway feels more real than any lock-er room photo or sideline banter could offer. Our sports legends be-come demystified and accessible.

Streaming giants are taking note and are funding more and more cinematic sports content. Brazil’s football giant Pelé has his

own Netf lix documentary explor-ing the complexity of his non po-litical stance during the 1960s. Other documentaries such as “Athlete A” and “Icarus” explore how the politics of Olympic-level athletes ultimately endanger their health and are also available on the streaming giant. Even “Tiger,” which I wrote about in my last column, exemplifies the caliber of sports storytelling that defines an athlete’s legacy.

If sports media is going to

survive in the age of streaming, it must challenge itself to dig for the stories behind the scoreboards. Cinematic appeal takes time, but it’s necessary to attract new audi-ences.

Taylor Mills is a sophomore writ-ing about sports media. She is also a Sports Editor at the Daily Trojan.

Her column, “Sideline to Byline,” runs every other Monday.

MILLS | Broader audiences demand more complex sports storytelling| continued from page 10 |

ACROSS

1 Modern Persia 5 Arnaz who loved

Lucy 9 Become

acclimated14 “Finding ___”

(2003 Pixar film)15 Alternative to a

wood, in golf16 Name said twice

before “Wherefore art thou”

17 In vogue18 Oscar the

Grouch’s home20 International

Court of Justice location, with “The”

22 Bulls in a bullfight23 Old weapon in

hand-to-hand combat

26 Place for a nest30 Digital picture,

maybe31 Less fresh33 Emergency call in

Morse code

36 Wild guess39 With 60-Across,

one of two U.S. vice presidents to resign from office

40 Result of a football blitz, maybe

44 Completely anesthetized

45 Exercise that might be done on a mat

46 Cover gray, perhaps

47 Like vinegar49 “Holy moly!”52 English channel,

informally, with “the”

53 Bit of fashionable footwear

58 Home in the shape of a dome

60 See 39-Across62 Dreaded cry from

a boss … or a hint to the ends of 18-, 23-, 40- and 53-Across

67 Listing in a travel guide

68 Texas ___ (school NW of Houston)

69 Dealer in futures?70 It’s a plot!71 News media72 Rival of Harvard73 Wood for boat

decks

DOWN

1 Not give an ___ (be stubborn)

2 Give a makeover, informally

3 Spanish girlfriend 4 “Hey, don’t jump

in front of me in the line!”

5 Insult 6 Time span

sometimes named after a president

7 Rather, informally 8 Where work may

pile up 9 Best Picture

winner set in 1-Across

10 Swims at the Y, say

11 “The Walking Dead” network

12 Cause of a sleepless night for a princess, in a fairy tale

13 Whole bunch19 Greek counterpart

of Mars21 Yadda, yadda,

yadda24 Zap with a light

beam25 Contest attempt

27 Classic work that’s the basis for Shakespeare’s “Troilus and Cressida”

28 “Goodness gracious!”

29 Not having two nickels to rub together

32 “For shame!”33 Fledgling pigeon34 Weight whose

abbreviation ends in a “z,” oddly

35 “Sexy” lady in a Beatles song

37 Blood grouping system

38 Hole-some breakfast food?

41 Nickname for the Cardinals, with “the”

42 Prefix with -pod or -partite

43 Zoo enclosure48 Foal : mare :: ___

: cow50 Lawyers’ org.51 Took care of

someone else’s pooch

54 Loud55 Land with a

demilitarized zone56 Delayed57 Four: Prefix59 Insets in a crown61 Line on a

calendar62 Talk, talk, talk63 Regatta

implement64 French “a”65 Wriggly fish66 Dr. of hip-hop

PUZZLE BY KEVIN CHRISTIAN AND ANDREA CARLA MICHAELS

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M O O D R I N G S S L I T SI N D U E T I M E M A B E LS T A N D S P A T A D E L ET O Y R E A C T R O L L E

W A L T H I T L I S TT O P O F F B E N I C EA P O R T B R O K E E V E NR E T D H A I R Y V E T OO L D S M O K E Y B I S O N

E F I L E R P U T O N SA R C A D E S K O L AL U R I D A R R O W D A BO D E L L L A U R A N Y R OF E M M E E S P E R A N T OT R E E S S H A R K W E E K

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For Information Call: 1-800-972-3550For Release Monday, March 1, 2021

Edited by Will Shortz No. 0125Crossword1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13

14 15 16

17 18 19

20 21 22

23 24 25 26 27 28 29

30 31 32

33 34 35 36 37 38 39

40 41 42 43

44 45 46

47 48 49 50 51

52 53 54 55 56 57

58 59 60 61

62 63 64 65 66 67

68 69 70

71 72 73

ANSWER TO TODAY’S PUZZLE

ACROSS 1 Part of a relay

race 4 Book after the

Gospels 8 Blows one’s top14 Some of its

members wear P.P.E.

15 Lava, e.g.16 Be in favor of17 *Having

panache19 Computer

accessory20 Feeling ready for

bed21 Neighbor of an

Arkansawyer23 Eastern “way”24 Dublin’s land, to

natives25 *Trinket28 File of

documents31 Fish-eating bird32 Awards for ad

agencies

34 Equipment for pentathletes

35 *State that many people want to get to on vacation?

40 Unadventurous41 Hang42 Hundredths of a

peso45 Tusked marine

creature of the Arctic

50 *Gaudy display52 Move like

molasses53 “Hometown

proud” supermarket chain

54 Rob of “St. Elmo’s Fire”

55 Carrier of sweatpants and sneakers

57 Everglades mammal

60 Game in which the answers to the starred clues are legal plays but cannot be formed even if you have both blanks

62 Difficult situations

63 Cake layer64 Poet’s nightfall65 Puts on the

schedule66 Action that may

be “contagious”67 Dejected

DOWN 1 Ran out, as a

subscription 2 Estevez of “St.

Elmo’s Fire” 3 Crystal ___

(some prognosticators)

4 Letters of urgency

5 Warm and snug 6 Looney Tunes

nickname 7 Watch

surreptitiously 8 California’s

motto 9 Tech school in

Troy, N.Y.10 Airer of TV’s

“Moesha” and “Buffy the Vampire Slayer”

11 Thick soups12 Thick syrups13 Four, on a par 4

hole16 Paprika or

pepper18 Snoring symbols

22 Face, in slang25 ___ Jenner,

Kardashian family matriarch

26 More eager27 Back of the neck29 Cold weather

roofing problem30 Golfer Ernie33 Adage35 Glass-___

(1933 banking legislation, informally)

36 Home of Dar es Salaam

37 Cracker name since 1934

38 “S.N.L.” alum Horatio

39 Place for a mud bath

40 Economizes43 Drivers who

rarely have passengers

44 Some Siouan speakers

46 Gestation station?

47 Paper tiger?

48 Georgia’s state wildflower

49 Bigfoot or yeti

51 Having some kick

55 Got bigger

56 Kitten’s plaything

58 T.S.A. employee, e.g.: Abbr.

59 & 61 Org. once headed by George H. W. Bush

PUZZLE BY PETER GORDON

Online subscriptions: Today’s puzzle and more than 7,000 past puzzles, nytimes.com/crosswords ($39.95 a year).Read about and comment on each puzzle: nytimes.com/wordplay.

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SportSPaGE 8 | Monday, March 1, 2021 | WWW.DAILYTROJAN.COM/SPORTS

By LachELLE SMIThStaff Writer

USC fell short against No. 10 UCLA 93-51 Friday at Pauley Pavillion in the Trojans’ regular-season finale. The Trojans are now No. 8 in the Pac-12 standings and face a major uphill-bat-tle heading into the Pac-12 tourna-ment.

The Trojans started strong in the first half against the Bruins with soph-omore forward Alissa Pili and fresh-man forward Jordyn Jenkins leading the charge. Pili led the team with 18 points and five rebounds. Jenkins con-tributed a career-high 14 points.

Both teams started off slow settling into the game. USC trailed the entire game with their smallest deficit com-ing in the first quarter when they were down by only three. As the game pro-gressed, however, the Trojans were un-able to find their footing, and trailed the Bruins 29-12 by halftime.

UCLA started to find their rhythm and USC could not find an answer to counter sophomore guard Charisma Osborne and senior forward Michaela Oneynwere’s. Osborne recorded a tri-ple-double with 18 points, 10 rebounds and 12 assists. Oneynwere scored a game-high 30 points, shooting perfect 6-6 from the 3-point line.

“She seems to be a world-class ath-lete,” said head coach Mark Trakh of Onyenwere. “She’s got speed, she’s got explosion, she jumps out of the gym. She has a high IQ and [is] a fu-ture WNBA star ... She’s got the whole package.”

Jenkins had the task of guarding Oneynwere for the majority of the game and was excited for the chal-lenge, knowing it wouldn’t be easy.

“Matching up with her was tough,” Jenkins said. “Especially on her senior night and me as a freshman. I knew I was in for a run. She went 6-6 from the 3-point line. She’s a great player ... It was good to play against her.”

As the Trojans trailed 69-39 going into the fourth quarter, they could not find an offensive spark from Sophomore guard Endyia Rogers and Graduate transfer Jordan Sanders. Both ended the game with five points.

USC could not sustain long offen-sive runs, shooting 34% from the floor and making only five 3-pointers the entire game. UCLA made 16 3-point-ers and shot 51% from the field.

After the game, Trakh acknowl-edged that his team struggled to find their rhythm the last few games and was optimistic that they will regain it going into the tournament.

“They played very well,” Trakh said. “We’ve kind of lost our stride these last three games. I just think we’ll re-gain it before the Pac-12 tournament. I think we’ve been trying to wait on a lot of people coming back from inju-ries. We just gotta find our stride. We will be fine.”

The Trojans struggled to mini-mize their turnovers on offense and ended the game with 19 turnovers in comparison to the Bruins 11. Trakh believes it was a combination of the Bruins’ ability to move the ball and his team’s lack of defense that was the de-ciding factor in the game.

“I think it was ball movement,” Trakh said. “They are very athletic. They shot the ball really well. Our de-fense needs to get better. We got to guard behind the line a lot better ... We do have to tighten up.”

Trakh made it clear that defense was the central issue for his team but that the biggest upside of the game for him was the return of Jenkins after

being injured at the beginning of the season.

“I think we have found [something] special over here in Jordyn”, Trakh said. “She suffered an ACL in high school and was out for a year. She’s only been really back with us for a month right now ... The one bright spot of to-day’s game was the way Jordyn played tonight. I was really happy and proud of the way she competed tonight.”

USC now waits for their seeding in the Pac-12 tournament. The Trojans will likely find themselves at No.8, which would put them against the No. 9 seed in a first-round game March 3 at 2 p.m.

Sports media’s money is with the cinematic

How do we remember athletes? The past half century provides endless films of their grace, their hustle and their words, but a leg-acy isn’t encapsulated in their TV record. I’ll give you one example to start: how we, or at least I, re-member Kobe Bryant.

I watched the goosebump-in-ducing short film Dear Basketball, narrated off a poem Bryant wrote in The Players’ Tribune before his last season. With its beautiful an-imation overlaid by Bryant’s soft goodbye to the sport he loved, the film won the Oscar for Best Animated Short Film in 2018.

It’s the realest documentation we have of the late, great athlete, more than all the highlight reels and game tapes combined. Sound like a radical statement? Watch the film again. No viewer can turn off the screen without feeling the journey of a dream-ridden kid to a worn-down legend. That’s why it won the Oscar, and is exactly what sports media should contin-ue to move towards.

When the pandemic stripped the world of day-to-day sports ac-tion, sports media distributors immediately turned to the back-log of documentaries they have and gave sports fanatics at least something they could snack on. March started out rough for this audience, but then came “The Last Dance.”

Labeled the saving grace of the sports quarantine period, the 10-part Michael Jordan series drew in re-cord-breaking viewership that ex-panded beyond the typical sports fanatic. My family became one of the five million households that put its two-episode premieres on our sacred Sunday docket. We watched what felt like in real time the goat struggle to rally his team to win a sixth championship, and my par-ents got to relive the glory of 90’s basketball.

I’ll save the synopsis for your own Wikipedia search, but the most astounding thing about this docuseries’ storyline ref lects Bryant’s five-minute masterpiece: it’s just about basketball.

To be more specific, it’s about the story of basketball, yet the point of the media’s ability to reach mass audiences remains the same. No broader political or social is-sue was addressed to rope in in-terest — it was the simple triumph and tragedy of the game itself that managed to make the series a cul-tural phenomena.

Welcome to the age of the cin-ematic sports documentary. Sorry 30 for 30, I’m not talking about you, but good run nonetheless. These types of film go beyond the reverent highlight reels and make sports a human-centered story anyone can follow. They are not made for the walking sports en-cyclopedias, but they do not miss out on the significance of cer-tain moments throughout certain games.

“The Last Dance” wasn’t an intense study of basketball’s

Taylor MillsSIDELINE TOBYLINE

USC finishes regular reason with loss to No. 10 UCLA

Simon Park | Daily Trojan

Freshman forward Evan Mobley posted a below-average 11 points and eight rebounds against Utah. The star freshman hasn’t eclipsed his average points per game since USC’s loss against Arizona Feb. 20. | see MILLS, page 7 |

By SahIL KUrUPMen’s Basketball Beat Writer

The Trojans fell on the road 71-61 to Utah Saturday night — a stark contrast to their dominant win over the Utes in January.

In their prior matchup, USC led by just four points at halftime be-fore hounding Utah defensively, holding them to 18 points in the second half in the 64-46 win.

It was a similar story with a completely different ending for the Trojans. After leading by two points at the interval, USC came out of the locker room looking f lat, connecting on just one of their first 13 field goal attempts. The Utes immediately rattled off an 8-0 run to start the second pe-riod, a trend that would continue to the final buzzer.

“Very disappointed in our sec-ond half of basketball,” USC head

No. 19 USC stumbles offensively in loss to UtahThe Trojans are now 1-3 in a series of late-season games before March.

Despite the loss, freshman forward Jordyn Jenkins was a bright spot for the team.

Peter Gastis | Daily Trojan

Freshman forward Jordyn Jenkins scored a career-high 14 points against the Bruins on Friday.

| see MBB, page 7 |