After a four-year hiatus, Occidental inducted four new members—three individual icons and a tandem of basketball titans—into the Athletics Hall of Fame on October 22 as part of Homecoming and Family Weekend.

Addressing the Sunday-morning gathering in Cannon Plaza, Director of Athletics Shanda Ness said, “I’m sure you all realize that we’re standing on the old Taylor Pool. Needless to say, athletics has changed a bit at Oxy since you were here. But one thing that never changes is the lifelong friendships and amazing memories that stick with you.”

Onward to Chicago: Freedom Seekers and the Underground Railroad in Northeastern Illinois, by Larry A.

For the Class of 1977’s 45th reunion in June 2022, Joe Rohde ’77 (and Mel Malmberg ’79) and Cheri (Eichen) Steinkellner ’77 (Sister Act, Summer Stock) wrote and performed a mini-musical, the lyrics to which appear below. (Next stop: the Pantages!) You’re invited to hum along.

Professor of History Emeritus Brice Harris Jr., who taught at Occidental from 1965 to 2003, died July 8, 2023, at his home in Pasadena, one day after his 91st birthday.   

When it comes to his research, Roland R. Griffiths ’68 leaves no detail to chance. Harriet de Wit, director of the Human Behavioral Pharmacology Laboratory at the University of Chicago, recalls Griffiths checking inside subjects’ mouths to be certain they had swallowed pills given them as part of a drug study on which the scientists had collaborated. Very few researchers, she says, would be quite as thorough.

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Not long after he was caught and tagged by wildlife biologists in 2012, P-22—a mountain lion who migrated from the Santa Monica Mountains to Griffith Park, a 20-mile odyssey that crossed the 405 and 101 freeways—became the face of urban wildlife in Southern California. Photographer Steve Winter’s photo of the big cat walking in front of the Hollywood sign, published in National Geographic in December 2013, cemented his iconic status.

In the fall of 1970—one year after New York City police raided the Stonewall Inn, a bar frequented by a queer clientele, sparking protests nationwide—a group of gay and lesbian Oxy students organized the Gay Liberation Front. In a statement of purpose, “GLF members explained that ‘gay lib’ is a process involving individuals and groups coming together to join hands in the common struggle for freedom and to join hearts in the common spirit of love and honesty,” the Occidental newspaper reported.

While the problems facing America can seem overwhelming, history shows us that we each have more power than we know—power that can change the course of history, Pulitzer Prize-winning author and historian Isabel Wilkerson told the Class of 2023 at Occidental College’s 141st Commencement ceremony on May 21.

As a child, Meko Winbush ’03 recalls, “I wanted to be an astronaut. Then somewhere like around age 12 or 13, my family rented Terminator 2, and I thought it was the dopest thing I’d ever seen. I watched it four or five times before we had to return it to Blockbuster.” After that, she continues, “I started asking my dad if I could borrow the camcorder and go outside and make awful films with my friends in the cul-de-sac. I just loved movies and filmmaking.”

In 2005, during a visit to the United States’ oldest Black-owned bookstore—Marcus Books in San Francisco—Will Power was flipping through the pages of an oversized poster book on Muhammad Ali, when he saw a picture of Ali and his entourage. Next to him was Stepin Fetchit—the controversial Hollywood actor, 40 years Ali’s senior—with a caption that described Fetchit as his “secret strategist.” The photo was taken in the midst of the Civil Rights Movement, a jarring discovery given the two figures’ divergent reputations in Black cultural memory.