Even before Shedrick G. Wise Jr. ’75 stepped onto the Occidental campus in the fall of 1971, he was a budding music prodigy. By age 17, he was directing multiple choirs at St. Andrew’s Baptist Church in Los Angeles. And in January 1972, when an informal group of African American Oxy students convened to perform a program of inspirational music to honor the late Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Wise served as the group’s choirmaster. Building off the success of that performance, the Occidental College Gospel Choir was born.

When the 2024 Pulitzer Prizes were announced on May 6, the recipient of the Breaking News Reporting award—Lookout Santa Cruz, a digital-only media outlet launched in November 2020—made headlines for its underdog triumph.

On an overcast day in June, biochemistry major Tylor Lee ’26 found himself at a Jack in the Box in West Hollywood, dressing the wounds of an unhoused woman—an amputee whose leg and foot were shoddily wrapped in toilet paper. A newly minted intern on a small street-medicine team, Lee had no prior experience with wound care, but the nurse on his team guided him through the procedure, which took about half an hour.

Sam Rubin ’82 got his first taste of broadcasting at the tender age of 19. After his first year at Oxy, he spent the summer reporting the weather for the CBS affiliate in toasty El Centro, 212 miles southeast of Los Angeles and the nation’s 230th-largest TV market. Temperatures notwithstanding, Rubin simply sought to make audiences happy, Oxy roommate Mike Stoddard ’82 recalls. “Sammy was never self-reflective. He really just enjoyed life.”

As the school year gets underway, I can feel the hum of excitement on campus. To me, August is always a time of anticipation and opportunity. We’re establishing new routines, setting goals for the months ahead, and embarking on new chapters in our academic journey.

The Alumni Board of Governors (BOG) works to connect alumni around the world. A subset of the BOG represents a standing committee that meets regularly to consider and promote ideas for sustaining the Oxy community we knew and loved during our years in Eagle Rock. How are we doing this?

On February 24, during a matinee performance of Occidental’s New Works Festival, an unidentified visitor snuck into Keck Theater. “It was really hard for me not to say hi to everybody because I like to say hi to everybody,” Tom Stritikus admits. The play he watched was A Slight Disruption, by Gianna Nguyen ’26, an urban and environmental policy major and interdisciplinary writing minor from Huntington Beach.

Talk to any Oxy alumni long enough about their fondest college memories, and inevitably the conversation will turn to their favorite destinations close to campus. Eateries rank high on any list, and many longstanding favorites remain in business today—Casa Bianca (founded in 1955), Pat & Lorraine’s (1977), and Señor Fish (1995) among them. With a constant influx of new businesses, it was hard to limit this list to 10 notable neighbors new and old, but we tried. (Share your favorites with us.)

Maryanne Horowitz
Professor of History
Years at Oxy: 51

Roberta Pollock
Professor of Biology
Years at Oxy: 35