Early history Occidental College was founded on April 20, 1887, by a group of
Presbyterian clergy, missionaries, and laymen, including
James George Bell,
Lyman Stewart, and
Thomas Bard. The cornerstone of the school's first building was laid in September 1887 in the
Boyle Heights now
East Los Angeles neighborhood of Los Angeles. The college's first term began a year later with 27 male and 13 female students, and tuition of $50 a year. In 1896, the Boyle Heights building was destroyed by fire. The college temporarily relocated to the old
St. Vincent's College campus on Hill Street before a new site was selected in
Highland Park in 1898. The Highland Park site was also bisected by the tracks of the Santa Fe Railroad, The following year, the college severed formal ties with the Presbyterian Church and became a non-sectarian, non-denominational institution. The small size of the campus and the disruption caused by frequent freight trains pushed the college's trustees to find a new location. Two weeks after
Booker T. Washington came to visit Occidental, on March 27, 1914, Swan, Fowler, and Johnson Halls were dedicated at its new Eagle Rock campus. Patterson Field, today one of the oldest collegiate sports stadiums in Los Angeles, was opened in 1916. In April 1917, shortly after the United States entered World War I, the college formed a Students Army Training Corps to aid the war effort. The Delta of California chapter of
Phi Beta Kappa was established at Occidental in 1926, at a time when the only other chapters in California were at
Stanford,
UC Berkeley, and
Pomona. During
World War II, many students left Occidental to fight in the war. In July 1943, the U.S. Navy established a Navy
V-12 officer training program on campus that produced hundreds of graduates before it was disbanded in 1945 at the end of the war. Occidental President Remsen Bird worked behind the scenes to help Oxy students of Japanese descent continue their education despite mandatory evacuation orders; his letters are included in the Japanese American Relocation Collection in Clapp Library. After having its first
Rhodes Scholar, Clarence Spaulding, named in 1908, Oxy seniors John Paden and Aaron Segal were awarded Rhodes Scholarships in 1958, the only time Occidental has produced two Rhodes Scholars in a single year. Paden and Segal were among the ten Occidental students who participated in Crossroads Africa that year, a forerunner to the
Peace Corps that later became a national program. In 1969, 42 students were suspended for peacefully protesting military recruiting on campus. One year later, faculty voted to suspend classes in the wake of the
Kent State shootings and America's invasion of Cambodia. Subsequently, Oxy students wrote 7,000 letters to Washington D.C., protesting U.S. involvement in the war in Southeast Asia. Occidental launched one of the country's first
Upward Bound programs in 1966, aimed at increasing the number of low-income, underrepresented high school students who become the first in their family to go to college. Also in 1969, the school opened its first two co-ed
dormitories, and two more followed a year later. In 1988,
John Brooks Slaughter, formerly Chancellor of the
University of Maryland, became Occidental's first black president. Building on faculty and student advocacy and a series of grants the college had received previously to increase the diversity of the Occidental student body, Slaughter led the process of creating a new mission statement that is still used today. Also, Slaughter led the college's community outreach expansion with the creation of the Center for Volunteerism and Community Service, the predecessor for the current Center for Community Based Learning. In November 1990, the college rededicated the campus' main chapel as the Herrick Memorial Chapel and Interfaith Center. The school also took down the crosses in the chapel in an attempt to "broaden Occidental's appeal among non-Christian students."
2000s In July 2006,
Susan Westerberg Prager became Occidental's first female president. She left her position in 2007.
Robert Skotheim served as interim president. In July 2009,
Jonathan Veitch became Occidental's 15th president, and the first native
Angeleno president. The college received national scrutiny in 2014 when the
U.S. Department of Education named Occidental College as one of 55 higher education institutions under investigation "for possible violations of federal law over the handling of sexual violence and harassment." In response to student and faculty outcry the college adopted a new interim sexual misconduct policy, hired a former assistant district attorney as a full-time, independent
Title IX coordinator, and added a new 24-hour, 7-days-a-week telephone hotline. The school also created a permanent Sexual Misconduct Advisory Board made up of students, faculty, and staff. Two years later, the investigation was concluded with the Office of Civil Rights finding that "the preponderance of the evidence does not support a conclusion that the College violated Title IX, except with respect to the issue of promptness in several cases during the 2012-13 school years." President
Barack Obama attended Occidental for two years prior to transferring to
Columbia University. In 2015, "
birthers" falsely claimed that Obama's Occidental College transcript revealed he received financial aid as a foreign student from Indonesia after the resurgence of a fake news story from 2009. In July 2020, Harry J. Elam Jr., formerly vice provost for undergraduate education and Drama professor at
Stanford University, became Occidental's 16th president. In August 2023, it was announced that he will retire in 2024 for health-related reasons. On March 26, 2024, it was announced that
Tom Stritikus, late of
Fort Lewis College, will become Occidental's president effective July 1. ==Campus==