Author: Michael Darling
Rangeview Hall, Oxy’s newest residence, is a vacuous hotel where community goes to die. It is a rush job lacking essential items while containing around a dozen televisions. But, please allow me to digress.
Around the time I was asked to write about Rangeview, I overheard two people in the Cooler discussing the hall. One was saying that he found it all to be a bit too much. His friend, however, had the opinion that Rangeview was great. At first, I made nothing of this conversation; it was the same one everybody around Oxy was having. However, he then proceeded to say that between the private bathrooms, the key cards and the exercise room, “it feels like I’m at a real college.”
“A real college? What does that even mean?” I thought. This fellow’s statement danced in my head like sugar plums for a few hours as I tried to understand it. Was Oxy not reputable because the halls used actual physical keys? More importantly, should I consider transferring to a more legitimate institution because I don’t have my own private bath?
This guy’s designation of Oxy as a real college made me wonder if this was the prevailing feeling on campus. So, I decided to ask around and see what people who lived in Rangeview and others who lived in the now “lesser dorms” thought of our new building.
Although there were some positive takes, most people found fault with Rangeview. I knew people did not like Rangeview for many reasons. Hell, I wouldn’t have written that first paragraph if I didn’t mean it. The doorbells and televisions were targets of criticism. Mandla Gobledale (sophomore) summed it up by saying, “Too far from food. Too far from Booth. Too far from reality.” But as I heard more opinions, I found out there were greater issues that genuinely bothered students about Rangeview.
The first thing that came to my attention was the absence of community. Rangeview resident Andrew Rogier (junior) was the first to alert me to this. “Socially, the community feeling is lacking because 1) doors can’t stay open on their own [and] 2) it’s too big / houses too many residents.”
An anonymous sophomore and resident of the Women’s Center, shared Andrew’s take on the doors. “You can’t leave your door open, they are too heavy and slam shut,” she said. “So pretty much that means when you go to your friend’s room, you’re walking down a hallway of closed doors. It’s daunting and unfriendly.”
Occidental has always prided itself on creating diverse communities and encouraging residents to keep their doors open. If Oxy is dedicated to the “Open Door Policy” why do they make it impossible to keep a door open in Rangeview?
I was later informed by an RA from Rangeview that they wanted to do a program where they’d make door stops so that the halls weren’t so deserted, but the administration rejected the program proposal. They also we’re not allowed to decorate. The doors to Rangeview rooms are fire doors and apparently it’s a fire hazard to leave them open. How is leaving a door open a fire hazard, and why were fire doors used for each room in Rangeview?
The image of Rangeview as a money dump was touched on by many people. The most frequent comment was that a lot of the money could have been used for the other halls as opposed to blowing so much on the new building. An RA from another hall expressed dissatisfaction with how Rangeview’s four laundry rooms have more washers and dryers than other halls, of which the machines are often broken. Others said the cash was being used on things that weren’t being used by students.
By now, the faults of the dorm have been well reported. Several of the televisions are not hooked up to a satellite and have no DVD players so they just hang there like expensive black canvases, the hot water didn’t work for nearly a week and the kitchen is inaccessible. Well, it is accessible, but only to campus dining staff for the purposes of catered events like fund raisers for rich alumni ==from which the school is hoping to get donations. This apparent lack of interest in student needs can also be seen in the building’s overt security.
Rangeview represents a new theme of housing style making its debut at Oxy: fortress-style living. According to a Rangeview RA, residents don’t like the multiple security doors they must swipe their card in front of in order to get to their room. This RA joked that it felt like being on the premises of a top-secret government agency and the only thing missing is eyeball scanners.
This RA also brought up another issue of security, which, though not directly related to Rangeview, must be addressed. The RAs interviewed in this piece all spoke under the conditions of anonymity because they feared they would lose their job or not be rehired by ResLife because they criticized Rangeview. Of everything I was told, this was the only thing to truly shock me. What does it say about Occidental that our student leaders are afraid to be openly critical of decisions made by the administration?
Between this seeming suppression and the haphazard nature of the handling of Rangeview, I cannot help but wonder what is going on behind the scenes of Occidental College. Is this how a real college is supposed to be, with student leaders worried about speaking up and a residence hall built without considering the needs of the student community being hailed as the wave of the future? If that’s how it’s to be, than it is best that Oxy return to its previous status, that of which the unknown man in the Cooler implied-an illegitimate college.
Michael Darling is a sophomore History major . He can be reached at mdarling@oxy.edu.
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