Carnett: Living the academic life in OCC dorms? A distinct possibility
It seems that a recent Orange County Register article reports that on-campus student housing could be in the offing at Orange Coast College as soon as the fall of 2019.
I have one word for that: Oorah!
As a former commuter student, I can vouch for the advantages of being a residential student. A student who’s involved in the academic and social life of a campus community comes away with a more-concentrated college experience. And that can translate into student success.
If OCC’s project reaches fruition, it’ll be the lone Southern California community college with on-campus housing. But it won’t be the first time Coast has had students living within its leafy precincts.
Two student dormitories were situated on campus when it opened its doors in the fall of 1948. They remained in operation for a dozen years.
OCC’s dorms took up two of more than 100 two-story wooden barracks constructed on the former 1,300-acre Santa Ana Army Air Base site between 1942 and 1945.
The federal government deeded the college 240 acres of that base.
A recent housing study conducted by the college indicates that as many as 1,900 students — out of a population of 22,000 — would be interested in living on campus. In 2013, only 14% of Coast’s students lived in Costa Mesa. Many commute to the campus from some distance.
A consultant has proposed building two four-story dorms on what was formerly OCC agriculture department land. The buildings would accommodate 800 students in apartment-like settings.
The proposal calls for four bedrooms to share a common space, possibly with a communal kitchen and bathrooms. Construction could begin in 2017.
One of OCC’s two original dormitories was reserved for athletes — football, basketball and baseball players and wrestlers. Non-athletes populated the dorm next door.
There were no dorms for women.
The original dorms consisted of small rooms in converted World War II barracks that each accommodated two students. Each room had two beds, a desk and a closet. A communal bathroom (actually, a slightly modified U.S. Army latrine) was located at the end of the hall.
The rooms rented for $30 a month and included two meals per day, Mondays through Fridays, in the student cafeteria.
A retired Navy chief petty officer by the name of Stanley (his last name has been lost to the fog of dormitory wars) managed the dorms. He loved to blow a whistle and shout, “Fall out!”
But his hearing and sense of smell were suspect.
An agriculture student in the early 1950s is said to have surreptitiously kept a prize Hereford he was raising for the Orange County fair in his room at night. He’d release it during the day to graze with the college herd.
Wrestler Dean Burchett came to the college in 1948 and lived for two years in the dorms. He later became an OCC professor.
“(The dorms) weren’t bad at all,” he told me during an interview 15 years ago. “We’d go off campus to eat when the cafeteria was closed.”
A fence surrounded the perimeter of the campus.
“Most … dorm students were from Los Angeles, Riverside, Barstow or San Diego,” early student Fred Owens told me in another interview. “They’d … go home on weekends, unless there was a big football game or something.”
Perhaps future residence halls will furnish student rooters for weekend athletic contests.
The original dorms came to life weekdays at 7 a.m. By 7:15 a.m., the washbasins in the restrooms had lines five and six people deep. By 7:40 a.m., most dorm students were in the cafeteria eating breakfast.
According to a 1950s article in OCC’s student newspaper, at 6:30 p.m. one could hear a shout echoing through one or both of the dorms: “Shut up! How can I study with all this noise?”
That voice usually belonged to Fred Owens, a linebacker, middleweight wrestler and ex-Marine. He was also a future OCC football coach.
Owens’ shouts commanded respect.
OCC’s dorms were razed in the summer of 1960, but they could be making a comeback.
JIM CARNETT, who lives in Costa Mesa, worked for Orange Coast College for 37 years.