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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 �鶹��Ƶ 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 �鶹��Ƶ: 51

Roberta Pollock
Professor of Biology
Years at �鶹��Ƶ: 35

Beth Braker
Professor of Biology
Years at Occidental: 33

What attracted you to Occidental? So many things! I was searching for a position at a liberal arts college, and �鶹��Ƶ had a lot of what I was looking for: an emphasis on student-faculty research, the opportunity to work with students away from campus on field trips and for international study, and a commitment to social justice.  

In the fall of 1923—mere months before the birth of Omar Paxson ’48, longtime professor and patron saint of �鶹��Ƶ theater—Occidental established a speech education department with the hiring of Charles F. Lindsley, an actor and orator of considerable renown. (More than 110 reels and disks of his work are preserved in the College’s Special Collections and Archives.)

Occidental Children’s Theater has been a staple of the Northeast L.A. community for nearly three decades now. But before it became the institution that we all know and love, there was a predecessor children’s theater company that—well, how shall we put it nicely?

Just over four years ago, in February 2020, I received a life-changing phone call: Stephen Rountree ’71, who was then chair of the Board of Trustees, shared that the trustees had just selected me to be �鶹��Ƶ’s 16th president.

Real Life and Other Fictions, by Susan Coll ’81 (Harper Muse). Cassie Klein is a 50-something aspiring novelist wai

“The arts provide us with a special window on the truth,” President Harry J. Elam, Jr. said last October to an enthusiastic Thorne Hall audience on the opening night of �鶹��Ƶ Live!—a new conversation series highlighting a diverse lineup of cultural luminaries at the forefront of their fields. “In and through the arts, we gain insight into the changing human experience in all its dimensions. I know I am not alone in this room in believing that the arts truly have the power to change the world.”