Newsletter #19

Hi Everyone,

It's been an eventful 3 weeks since the last Newsletter! Maybe more accurately, the last 3 weeks of 2025 have been…very 2025. In the last Newsletter, I was optimistic for the second half of the year. Sorry about that. Perhaps I got a little ahead of myself.

It all started off pretty well. As I shared previously, in late June I was elected President of Staff Assembly. Despite my casual and often joking nature, those who have served with me know that I take this responsibility seriously. I'm grateful for the outpouring of encouragement, support and congratulations I've received. I’m feeling confident and ready for the challenge, especially knowing I have the support of the new officers, multiple past presidents, and dozens of past officers, chairs, and members that I'm close with. I’m very excited about the incoming members, too. I also know that it’s going to be an exceptionally tough year.

After the short work week, we celebrated the 4th of July with my son's soccer team, had a lazy weekend, and headed out early Monday morning to pick up a rented RV for a week-long camping trip to Leo Carrillo. Things were looking up.

After deftly captaining a four-wheeled-lane-wide-land-yacht across the I-110, I-10, and PCH, we excitedly (and for me, relievedly) arrived unscathed. For those that haven’t camped there, Leo Carrillo is full of spacious campsites, tucked a good 50 feet off the campground road, often under a magical canopy of trees. But not us. Because this is 2025. Of course we got what might possibly be the crappiest campsite in the entire State Park. It was a small triangle of dirt, tight on the road, with absolutely no shade, covered in loose rocks. At least our family car fit next to the RV, and the facilities were close by.

Aside from direct scorching sunlight on the campground for most of the week, the time away from 5G was a blessing. We got just enough juice to get updates on our phone, but coverage was unreliable so you couldn't stream or even count on emails or websites to load. The RV had a generator, so there was some A/C and shade 4 hours a day. The beach was within walking distance, so we spent a few full days down in “Cove #1”, our traditional hangout spot for the past 3 decades. My son’s cheeks got horribly sunburned on day one (despite our frequent reminders, and his insistence that he did a good job with sunscreen), so our week was interspersed with some lazy campground days spent recovering, resting, and riding bikes. The ladies (my wife and daughter) slept in the RV at night, the boys (me and my son) in our 8-person mansion-sized tent. We were joined on Friday night by our kids’ friends through AYSO along with their mom, her older daughter (coincidentally a current USC student) and their family dog. Most of us (6 plus the dog) packed into the America-sized tent. Somehow we made it all work.

Saturday was overcast. I was doing the normal camping dad thing, sitting in my beach chair watching the kids after a morning of camp-made breakfast burritos and too many morning mimosas.  I was avoiding the water having just the day before re-learned the lesson of why we don’t ride bikes in sandals. The sun was still well concealed behind the clouds, but was getting increasingly brighter. I took note and started to re-apply sunscreen when my son emerged from being buried by his friend in the sand. He walked over looking very confused and said “is everything gray for you?”. Once he realized there was something seriously wrong with his eyes- and only his eyes- he started to panic. “No. No. No. Is it going to be like this forever???” He was obviously distraught. As a parent, it was absolutely crushing to watch his trauma unfold in real time. 

We were able to remain calm and eventually get him to focus on his breathing. We got the attention of a lifeguard who called for assistance. My son was checked by two lifeguards and two law enforcement officers, with the latter both EMTs. We got him stabilized and long story short, my wife and son left a day early. She brought him back to Kaiser Sunset ER where he was seen. The term used was “photo receptor bleaching”.  Over the next 48 hours, his color returned, first in his stronger eye, and more slowly in his weaker eye, due to his amblyopia. My daughter and I left the next morning, glad to have help from our friends when it came time to break down camp. We’re all glad he’s better. All’s well that ends well, I guess.

I tell this (very long) story for two reasons. Reason one is that stories like this remind us of our shared humanity. We’re not budget line items, or numbers on a spreadsheet, or costs to be removed to rectify a structural deficit. My story is your story, just a little different. What we share is that in life, we all have our individual moments of joy and celebration, of devastating injury or heartbreak, of recovery and healing. But life is not just individual stories or experiences. On our individual journeys, we intersect with and are reliant on others, especially in our moments of crisis.

Reason two is this: my son's vision improved, but the scars remain.  The trauma he experienced is still there, as it is for every single person that witnessed his suffering. When color returned to one eye, it wasn’t a moment to celebrate. We were still deeply unsettled and worried for his future. Even after the second eye returned to normal, the emotional scars aren’t healed. This is the same story with our TAB. It was taken away, shockingly and suddenly. It was only partially restored. Somehow we’re expected to be understanding and accepting of this. But just as I wouldn’t walk away from my son and tell him “at least you have half of it back”, I won’t do this with our TAB fight. Not ever.

As a colleague and friend said in our meeting three weeks ago, “the ONLY way we make it through this is with community”. I’ll add to that by saying this: when one of us is injured, our whole community hurts until we’re all better together.

So thanks for being here, allowing me this, and being a part of this community.

We are 360 strong!

Table of Contents

• Surveys and Open Docs

• Other places to submit feedback

• Discord

• Other Resources

Surveys and Open Docs

If you can’t already tell, I personally don’t believe in “survey fatigue". Perhaps that’s because I make only the best surveys. But just in case some of you are tired, I’ve been recruiting new folks to the Newsletter, so hopefully they’ll pick up the slack.

(NEW) Thoughts and Questions Survey

This community won’t work without your input. So rather than me telling you what I think about the letter, you tell me. In the next Newsletter I’ll bug all of you once again, and in a month I’ll close it out and let you know if you were right or not…

We still have Feelings v2.0, Leads, and Storytelling open. The storytelling I’m gonna get more aggressive with in the next few Newsletters. We will need to start telling your stories for this to work!

Other places to submit feedback

Suggestion Box

USC has a new Suggestion Box! Ok, seriously??? I’m generally pretty casual, but after two consecutive years totaling over $350M of deficits- which most (or all) of us had literally NOTHING to do with- perhaps it shouldn’t be branded so casually. But then again, I’m just a guy with an AA in Humanities from PCC. Perhaps it’s taught in the 300 (or 500) level courses at USC…or maybe it’s just another well intentioned yet absolutely tone deaf misfire.

For those of you who signed my contact consent form, you know I’m not asking for a DDOS attack, I’m just asking for measured, professional, community-centric, respectfully defiant TAB support comments, preferably from each of you individually. Bonus points if you include the words “My15atUSC” and/or “Restore our TAB”. You can submit anonymously. 

For the record, Qualtrics does natively record IP address and geo-location in their survey responses. I share that only so you don’t send multiple messages as it will be obvious, likely viewed as spam, and undermine our approach.

Presidential Search Committee

A few weeks ago, I sent a message to the group to provide our feedback to the Presidential Search Committee vendor. You can revisit the instructions here.

I was pleased to see a handful of letters that I was Cc’d on. Some of them were especially amazing. Thank you for your support, and for advocating for our community!

Staff Assembly Feedback Survey

As a catch-all for current staff, if there are any issues you’re concerned about, TAB or otherwise, please submit via our Staff Assembly Feedback Survey. It’s anonymous, reviewed by the officers, and shared with leadership. 

Updated Public Data Folder

I did some housekeeping in the Community Data (Public) folder. If you want to look back at past surveys or shared documents, or recreate my poem video, it should be a bit easier to find what you’re looking for.

Discord

We have 26 folks on the My15atUSC Discord! Thanks for starting a community with me there. It’s still slow and casual, but maybe I’ll start a voice chat or something in the near future…

It may take me a few days to notice you over there. Once I do, I’ll send a private message so I can identify you. That info will be known only by me. With that, I can update your role to “Verified Member” so you can see all of the channels.

Other Resources

As many of you are already aware, “Morning, Trojan” has a “Live: USC layoff and budget cut tracker”. It’s a sneaky “Web exclusive”. If you haven’t already given them your email, you should. What you get in return is worth it, promise.

Ok, no Easter Eggs or flowery send-offs this time. I’ve used enough words.

Thanks again for being here, and especially for making it to the end of this Newsletter.

Keep in touch, talk to you soon.

Phil

[email protected]