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March-April 1912: President John Willis Baer announces the trustees’ decision to convert Oxy into an all-men’s school. Students protest, and the idea is abandoned.

March 22, 1948: The Board of Trustees cancels a rental agreement of Thorne Hall for a March 31 program with poet Langston Hughes, citing the potentially “divisive social and political effect” of his visit. The decision creates friction between Oxy and the American Civil Liberties Union, and 28 students sign a letter to the trustees condemning their action.

Camilla Taylor had been driving for 16 hours on the night of January 7 and was getting close to their Altadena home when the fire on the mountain came into view. “The hillside was black besides the fire because all of the power was out,” recalls Taylor, an artist, printmaker, and sculptor who joined the Oxy faculty as a resident assistant professor in 2018. Once they got home, they ran inside to find their husband, Jason Troff, with an overnight bag packed and carriers at the ready for their four cats, waiting for an evacuation order.

Whenever Administrative Law Judge Ira Sandron ’71 of Miami is in Los Angeles for a trial, he has lunch with his L.A.-based counterpart, Brian Gee ’87. “We enjoy reminiscing as well as discussing procedural issues,” says Sandron, who works out of the Washington, D.C., Branch of the Division of Judges within the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB).

“Ira and I have a lot in common, including our shared Oxy experience,” says Gee, who works out of the San Francisco Branch—just like Sandron did at the outset of his nearly 50-year career in government service.

Higher education has a unique capacity to address national priorities, confront global challenges, and improve outcomes for humanity. Many of our most important medical, technological, and social advancements have been driven by academic researchers who dedicate their careers to furthering our collective knowledge.

Our society benefits from the rigorous work accomplished at U.S. colleges and universities—not just at large research institutions but at small liberal arts colleges such as Occidental.

From art to history to politics, the Oxy calendar has been top-heavy with visitors who had plenty to say this semester. Oxy Live! welcomed visual artist Ed Ruscha to Thorne Hall on February 4. On February 18 and 19, historian and reproductive justice advocate Deirdre Cooper Owens visited Occidental as the 2025 Stafford Ellison Wright Scholar-in-Residence. On April 8, Atlantic staff writer Tom Nichols delivered the 2025 Jack Kemp ’57 Distinguished Lecture in Choi Auditorium.

When South Carolina resident Julian Washington enlisted in the Army in 1966, he expected to be deployed to Vietnam for his service. Instead, he was sent to learn photography during basic training in New Jersey. After that, he did public relations and photojournalism while stationed in Germany, and he continued to pursue photography professionally after his discharge in 1969. “I grew up with my dad taking pictures and with cameras and lights being around,” says his daughter, Janna Ireland.

Mira Hart ’26 enjoyed science in high school and assumed she would major in chemistry, although as a self-described “outdoorsy person,” she had a hard time imagining herself working with molecules in a lab as a career. But when she joined the Geology Club in her first semester at Occidental, the Seattle resident found her passion—a field of study that combined her existing love for the outdoors and chemistry with her newfound interests.

“Politics was something my family never shied away from talking about within our household,” Samantha Acuña says. “My parents have had very different trajectories in terms of their life and immigration experiences because of the political histories of their respective countries. All the work I do is inspired by my family and our own history.”