Washington Week: Student Voices (O)

USC cops, officials prepare for Ohio State game
By Ashley Archibald
Daily Trojan, USC
September 12, 2008

As analysts call Saturday's game the Super Bowl of the college football season and the illicit T-shirt salesmen get ready to peddle their derogatory wares, USC is making extra preparations for its game against Ohio State.

USC's administrative forces are also gearing up for the game, ready to shepherd students, keep drunk tailgaters in line and maintain order. All Department of Public Safety officers will be on duty Saturday, either staked out by the Coliseum or on campus.

Serpentines, line guiders similar to those at a theme park, will be set up to keep people out of the streets, and DPS officers will be there early to make sure students behave themselves.

"We'll be there early," DPS Capt. David Carlisle said. "Let's just leave it at that. We don't want to give a number and have students come before on purpose."

Exposition Park Police will also be on hand to assist DPS.

All students are guaranteed a seat at the game, but the best ones near the 30-yard line are up for grabs. Bryan Bai, a sophomore majoring in business administration, plans to wait at the doorstep of the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum at 8 a.m. with other members of Korean-American Campus Mission.

Kickoff is at 5 p.m.

"We want really good seats," Bai said. "A bunch of guys are doing body paint for the game and we're just really hyped up."

Bai and every other undergraduate student who purchased a 2008 football student season ticket earlier this summer is assured a seat at every home game, said Debra Duncan, director of financial and business services at the USC Ticket Office.

Tim Tessalone, USC's sports information director, said the hype ahead of the Ohio State game is no surprise.

"USC and Ohio State haven't met since the early '90s," Tessalone said. "And there are championship implications. This is a pretty significant match."

Campus officials said the Ohio State game won't be reminiscent of the first 2006 home game against Nebraska. In 2006, hundreds of students flooded to the Coliseum only to discover that the student section had hit capacity, and police had to hold back a crowd of frustrated students.

In the aftermath, USC President Steven B. Sample instructed the USC Ticket Office to guarantee undergraduate students who had purchased the season pass for future games.

The guarantee doesn't extend to graduate students, though, who said they were angry because the new policy excludes them.

"I think this policy is very unfortunate because some graduate students are very dedicated supporters of our Trojan football team," Mathias Knape, president of the Graduate and Professional Student Senate, wrote in an e-mail. "The Graduate and Professional Student Senate will work together with the administration to prevent this happening again next year."

The policy has other drawbacks, Duncan said.

"Dr. Sample said we had to sell to every student who wanted to buy," she said. "No more than 6,000 students were at any game last year."

Usually, about 12,000 students purchase student season tickets.

DPS officials said their biggest concern is boisterous tailgaters on campus.

"Our biggest request is that we'd like to see people be responsible with the use of alcohol," Carlisle said. "Then there are those that DPS has to take time with."

Despite what sounds like high mobilization, these are the actions that DPS takes at every home game.

"We're really not doing more for the Ohio State game than for other Trojan home games," Carlisle said. "Since Pete Carroll and the Trojan Football team has been so successful, the Coliseum always has 90,000-plus people in it and is packed with tailgaters. Every game."

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