University Housing informed incoming freshmen in a July 1 email that the Orfalea College of Business Residential Learning Community (RLC) will not be offered for the 2024-2025 academic year.
Freshmen students will still have a chance to be placed in their second choice RLC if spots are available, otherwise they will be placed in a different community, the email stated.
In an RLC, students can live with others who share the same field of study, career aspirations or identity.
During the 2023-2024 academic year, the OCOB RLC was located throughout different residence halls in the Red Bricks, according to University Spokesperson Chris DeMoville.
Former Tenaya resident and business sophomore Allison Cadena said she felt like the RLC helped her collaborate and study with people in her classes. She added it will be harder now that they aren’t in one space.
“I think it’s not only the business kids that are being disrespectful and causing the damage,” Cadena said. “I don’t really get why [OCOB is] only suffering and not other colleges or RLCs.”
Since the pandemic, the OCOB residential experience has been affected by disruptive behavior like excess noise, lack of respect for neighbors and resident advisors, unregistered guests, issues with trash disposal, and deployment of fire extinguishers, DeMoville said in an email to Mustang News. DeMoville also noted damages to the dorm including broken screens and broken ceiling tiles.
Despite this behavior, Cadena and Lauren Jaffe, a former Tenaya resident and business sophomore said that they would choose to live in the OCOB RLC again.
As this pattern has escalated throughout the years, DeMoville said this decision was made with student success and well-being in mind.
“We’ve seen, and our OCOB students have experienced, the impacts of ongoing violations of housing policies, community damages and obvious disregard for attempts to maintain and restore peace by both live-in staff and outside security personnel,” University Spokesperson Matt Lazier said in an email to Mustang News. “Not every OCOB resident participated, of course, but these ongoing actions have impacted the whole community.”
Cadena said she experienced disruptions in her dorm, including St Fratty’s Day damages and broken ceiling tiles, which all Tenaya Hall residents were charged for. Cadena recounted residents being loud and destructive late at night during finals week and before big tests and presentations.
“It wasn’t over the top crazy, like to the point where it was ruining my grades or anything, but I could see it being distractful for other students for sure,” Cadena said.
The top three largest damage costs for the 2023-24 academic year were all Red Brick halls housing the OCOB living communities, according to University Housing.
“I think OCOB students have bigger personalities and are very loud and can be obnoxious and destructive, more so than a lot of other residential learning communities,” Jaffe said.
There are 20 first-year RLCs offered this upcoming year and three transfer RLCs being hosted in Cerro Vista apartments: Bishop, Islay and Hollister. One building might have multiple RLCs and students can pull in roommates from different majors, DeMoville wrote.
“Academic diversity exists in all our residence halls,” DeMoville wrote in an email.
DeMoville said they are having conversations with students in OCOB about opportunities to connect with other students in the college.
“We are open to assessing how this shift goes for our students,” DeMoville told Mustang News to bring back the OCOB RLC in the future.
