Life and Times of the Dorms

One of the first dormitories at CSULB, Los Alamitos.

Courtesy of Shane Kendall

Over 2,400 students that go to CSULB live on campus in the dorms. For nearly the first two decades of schooling at CSULB there were no dorms. The students who did choose to go to school here had to find there own place on there own outside of school. Incoming students who enroll as of now must live in the dorms for the first year if you are a freshman and do not live with a parent or guardian.

The first class began in 1949 as “Los Angeles - Orange County State College”. The first dorms were Los Alamitos and Los Cerritos and built in the late 60’s. The “red bricks”, which Los Alamitos and Los Cerritos are referred to, were the original on campus housing at CSULB. These red bricked buildings have identical buildings found on most of the CSU campuses throughout the state. The Residence followed after in the late 70’s as it added an additional six buildings. Parkside was added nearly a decade after that in the mid 80’s with a total of nine additional buildings. Then almost 30 years went by until the RLC buildings, which consists of two buildings, opened up as CSULB residence last fall in 2009.

For the past 40 years the dorms have been around with much expansion. Starting off with one building and now with about 20 buildings has given a lot of momentum toward even more possible expansion.

Not much expansion has gone on since the last building was added, however. Every year attempts are made to keep them up to date. Structurally, some buildings are renovated every summer. This summer the focus will be on building D, as well as new furniture for the International House.

“The stuff isn’t bad. It’s always pretty clean. Nothing is ever dirty that I’ve seen,” says Tanner Prevtrail, 19, student at CSULB living in Los Alamitos dorms.
Kevan Shipley, 22, a former custodian at CSULB, would sometimes work in the dormitory area says he would never find anything too wild.

The housing officials at CSULB are expecting about 220 new residents for the spring semester. This is due to the increased spring enrollment. “This is an unusually high number of new residents for the spring semester,” says Carol Roberts, the housing director at CSULB. She says they are doing all they can to make sure they are welcomed and to help them make a successful transition to the University.

Plans are beginning to be made for a large scale renovation of Los Alamitos in the summer of 2012, as well as Los Cerritos in the summer of 2013.
Plans to expand would have to be made in a long term due to lack of land to actually place any potential buildings. Off campus building is a couple of miles away which is one option. Another would be to go up! Adding more levels to old buildings could be a potential option, without bringing up possible zoning laws or safety precautions. A third possible option would be to take out parking lot __asdf and build on that spot of land. Obvious repercussions would come from some of these.

Throughout the years the increase in number of students enrolled has not increased too drastically. The possibility of a large scale expansion of the on-campus living situation does not seem to be a possibility in the future anytime soon. The numbers have not increased too much in the past several years. Before the dorms were built the numbers were much lower and had more reason for expansion.

The number of students in the dorms seems to not be too much to handle for some students.
“I love all the people I see. I was always meeting new people and seeing people I haven’t seen before,” says Morgan Dominguez, 19, a former resident at the Residence Commons. “I miss always being around tons of people it makes me feel so alive!”

Whether the dorms are expanding more or staying the way they are, the students seem to love what they have become. From just two buildings half a century ago to 20 buildings now, the on-campus living situations have grown dramatically. From the perspective of the people they are built for (the students), the dorms make living on campus an experience that will leave a good mark on CSULB, as long as they keep up with their standards.

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Carol Roberts, 51, is the Housing Director at CSULB. She has held this position for two years on January 20, 2011. She has been working in Housing and Residential Life for almost 30 years. Before she acquired the position here at CSULB she worked at UCSB, The University of Vermont, USC, SDSU, UCI and Concordia University. She has been living in the Long Beach/Los Alamitos area for almost 20 years. She says she has always dreamed of getting the position she has right now.

This is her first time working at CSULB and hopes to stay here until she retires.