OPINION: USC Campus Security Asking More Questions Than Ever About My Bloody Garbage Bag Collection
By Phineas Kelly
LOS ANGELES – As USC students and faculty grow frustrated with the additional security at all campus entrances, the wait times have become longer and more stressful. However, these annoyances are insignificant compared to the trouble I face when I try to enter campus with my collection of bloody garbage bags.
Before this semester, my thoughtfully curated collection of blood-soaked trash bags might garner one or two glances from simple-minded folk, but now we live in a surveillance state where every innocent bag is ransacked without proper cause. I am scarcely able to step a single foot onto campus without being swarmed by bureaucracy-loving, bootlicking instruments of the law, asking all manner of insane questions like “Whose blood is this?” and “Why is there a hand poking outta there?” As if the mystery of the blood’s origin wasn’t the entire point of collecting the bag in the first place!
USC’s drastic and insensitive overreach of security policy has caused me personal anxiety from having to explain, ad nauseam, that “No, I Don’t Think There’s a Body In There, But The Bag Is Worth More Sealed So No, I Can’t Check For You.” The aggressive tactics used by campus security officers have also made me consider leaving the Bloody Trash Bag Community (commonly known as the BTBC), a group I have come to know through outings to morgues, highway underpasses, and active crime scenes. It is disgraceful that USC claims to be community-driven, yet actively campaigns against a vibrant and mostly unincarcerated group of people, united by a love of mystery and vital fluids. EVK has lost a loyal patron today.
