The Youthful Exception That Proves the Rule

A few weeks ago, the Skull and Dagger gang got together at school, to go over what kind of prank to pull on the younger students.

Alaina K. Kipps was in on the plot.

Don’t worry. She’s harmless.

A member of the Skull and Dagger has no hidden agenda (or weapon) like a Trench Coat Mafia’s, nothing radical up its sleeves.

It is said to be the oldest society on USC’s campus. More than 80 years old, until the ‘80s it was for men only.

A woman as practical as Alaina Kipps can be useful in a practical joke. Her intellect is not exactly a secret at SC. Kipps is the Class of ’99 valedictorian--a featured speaker at this Friday morning’s commencement exercises.

One of her last acts as a senior was figuring out how to put one over on a bunch of fresh freshmen.

“We decided to use the ‘Star Wars’ hype,” she says of Skull and Dagger, an organization of prestige made up of USC’s honor students and class leaders.

In conjunction with the film’s upcoming release, Kipps says, “We promised ‘a special trailer, with special guests.’ ”

And that’s what they delivered.

As underclassmen and women assembled at the appointed hour, up drove the Skull and Dagger society’s members--the “special guests”--in a borrowed trailer.

*

Ithink we’ve all heard more than enough in recent weeks about students who cause trouble. It makes us fear for the future.

Then along comes Kipps, and we can breathe a little easier.

She’s a statuesque woman (6-feet-2) from Santa Cruz who has spent her USC years on a rickety bicycle, a dilapidated Schwinn she found in her grandmother’s garage, so old no thief is willing to steal it.

That bike’s got a lot of miles on it.

At her busiest, Kipps would rush to a morning premed lecture (she begins Harvard medical school in the fall), practice volleyball most of the afternoon (she was a star middle blocker on a nationally ranked SC team), then go to band practice (she played French horn in the school’s concert band) on whichever nights she wasn’t doing research in labs, all the while maintaining a 4.0 grade-point average.

Last summer, she worked in an HIV research center for mothers and children. The subject of Kipps’ final final exam Tuesday was AIDS in Society.

No, no trench coats for her.

She’s more like lab-smock Mafia.

Daughter and niece of prominent doctors--her mother’s a high school English teacher--Kipps, 21, this week will receive a bachelor of science degree in psychobiology.

“She’s attacking the future,” says Dr. Peter Shugarman, an associate professor of biology. “The future’s out there, and she’s not afraid of it.”

Shugarman has been at USC so long--”from year 6,” he jokes--that he’s seen every kind of kid come and go. Kipps to him was extraordinary. Every day they shared, he looked forward to her seated at the head of his class, taking notes in four different colored pens.

One day last December, she showed up wearing a knee brace.

In the fifth game of her final season, Kipps, who came to SC on an athletic scholarship, was playing volleyball against Indiana when a leg buckled. A ligament was torn, ending her career. Her coach, Lisa Love, recalls it being the only time she saw a player in pain diagnose an injury while a trainer was examining it.

“Indicative of her character,” Shugarman says, “on the day after she was injured, with that brace on her knee, I have never seen anybody so devastated. A week later, she was on to a new challenge.”

Love loves her so much, she tried to persuade Kipps not to leave.

As associate athletic director, she recently proposed: “Alaina, I’m going to offer you a package you can’t refuse. You still have a year of eligibility [due to the injury]. Why don’t you let the athletic department pay for your graduate work courses?”

Kipps thought about this.

“Well, I could try anthropology,” she said.

*

It was an offer Kipps did refuse. Much as she’ll miss USC, she doesn’t want to miss what happens next.

“I could try to get a PhD-M.D., but I wouldn’t be done with school until I’m 29!” she says. “I’m feeling old as I speak. That’s why I don’t want to spend my life working with rats or on research that could help people in 20 or 50 years. It’s just not me. I’d rather do surgery or medicine that could help a human being right now, not later.”

So many students have become takers of lives.

How lucky we are to find one who wants to save them.

Mike Downey’s column appears Sundays, Wednesdays and Fridays. Write to him at Times Mirror Square, Los Angeles 90053. E-mail: [email protected]