From midnight breakfast, to ice storm, to stolen property, OCU students have accrued a wide variety of memories from their time in college.
Jay Williams, OCU alumnus, said he misses midnight breakfast, an event in the Caf in Tom and Brenda McDaniel University Center during finals week where students could eat breakfast food late at night and participate in raffles for prizes. Williams said the event was a nice way to de-stress.
“Midnight breakfast was always a fun thing to do during finals week, kind of stress eat all of our academic pains away. Just being in a community with my friends and having a distraction from the realities of the world around us,” Williams said. “Can we please relive those days?”
Williams said he always entered the raffle but never won.
“The prizes were always so cool, like how could we afford all of this,” he said.
Williams said he also misses free movie night, an event hosted by the Student Activities Council providing one free movie ticket to OCU students every month.
“Just to go downtown and meet other OCU students, that was really important for me, especially freshman year,” he said. “Free movie night was a lifesaver.”
Daniel Paugh, OCU alumnus, is more commonly known as ‘Banjo Man.’ Paugh said he spent sunny days out on the quad playing music for students during his senior year.
“I guess it sprung up. I just enjoyed going out on the quad on nice days when the sun was out and picking the banjo,” Paugh said.
Paugh said he appreciated the support of his fellow students.
“My friends would send me screenshots of people talking about banjo man, and that really made me stoked because I didn’t know if it was annoying,” he said. “Keep being positive and supportive and encouraging people because I knew I really appreciated it.”
Matt Tuley, OCU alumnus, spent his four years at OCU playing guitar and entertaining students in various elevators.
“It started my freshman year when I was in Walker Hall. I was just playing some Christmas songs in my room, and my suitemate comes in and says ‘Matt, you should go play in the elevator because you could get a lot of ladies,” and I thought, ‘you know, that’s a great idea, Greg,’” Tuley said.
Tuley said he began playing Christmas songs in the Walker Hall elevator and continued to play Christmas songs in the Methodist Hall elevators until he graduated. Tuley also said he was asked to return to Walker Hall one year to play at freshman orientation.
“They paid me with a Blu-ray Disc player,” he said. “I felt bad because I already had something that would do that, so I just traded it in at Sam’s club for like $70, and it was great.”
Tuley said he and Paugh once discussed doing a collaboration.
“Nothing ever came of it, which is on me,” Tuley said. “It happens, no hard feelings.”
Dustin Dale Barlow, OCU alumnus, was once kicked out of the cafeteria for allegedly not wearing shoes.
“First of all, I just think it’s funny, ‘the barefoot thing,’ because I don’t really know who all participated, and I also didn’t know it was an event,” Barlow said. “I think people misconstrued the reason I did what I did.”
Barlow said the practice, known as earthing, is a common way to ground oneself to promote mental health. Barlow said he was struggling with his mental health and took a week off of school.
“That week sparked a lot of revelations, and it was a genuine altering time of my life,” he said. “College is overwhelming and overstimulating, and I struggled with centering myself.”
Barlow said during his junior year, he realized that connecting to the ground was helping him mentally.
“There are so many nerve endings in your feet. It was a conscious mental health decision. I didn’t think it deserved an explanation,” he said.
Barlow said one day, there was a debacle.
“I wore my sandals to the cafeteria and wore my shoes, and then when I sat down to eat, I took my sandals off and put my feet on top of my sandals,” he said. “I understand how people can think that’s gross, but I just perceived it as people were just too worried about what I was doing and not themselves.”
Barlow was asked to leave the Caf after finishing his meal. Barlow said what amazed him was how quickly word spread.
“What blew my mind was when I got kicked out of the Caf, I walked to rehearsal and immediately someone in the costume shop was like, ‘I heard you got kicked out of the Caf,’” he said. “I was just like, ‘why did that travel so quickly?’”
Barlow said the intention behind his choice was never acknowledged.
“All of these other students started doing it too. They might have different approaches to why they were doing it, but that’s why I did it,” he said. “I noticed it was a mental health decision that was good for me, but then it ended up being in the school newspaper, but it wasn’t anything about why I made the decision, it was just about me getting kicked out of the Caf.”
In 2019, O(k)CU created four signs with the four letters of the new school acronym. The signs were on display; however, one day the sign with the letter “K” on it disappeared.
Trae Trousdale, mass communications/political science senior, said he remembers the stolen “K” incident.
“All of the students getting a laugh from the ‘K’ being stolen, but I also distinctly remember Levi and Dr. Ayres being concerned and so offended that we would dare get rid of such a hideous addition to the beautiful OCU acronym that we know today,” Trousdale said. “I remember Levi sending out an email saying they would review the cameras, and then I think it magically reappeared.”
Trousdale said he tried to be one of the first adopters of the new acronym.
“I have since rectified that foible in my character,” he said. “I just want the perpetrator to know that I think it is only because of them that we are the OCU that we are today. I thank them.”
In the 2020-21 school year, OCU students dealt with multiple weather catastrophes.
Meghan Settle, design and production senior, said she lost power in Cokesbury Court Apartments during the spontaneous ice storm, which closed campus Oct. 26-30.
“My power went out while I was in class on Zoom, so I got kicked out, which is fine. But I work in the mailroom, so I still had to go to work the next day and see if the power was out in the university center.”
Settle said the mailroom is always open.
“The next day we had to have a delivery made to the mailroom. So even though we had no power in the mailroom, I had to go let them in,” she said.
After the ice storm, Oklahoma City was hit by a record-breaking blizzard Feb. 15-18, which caused multiple housing emergencies.
Addison Saviers, religion senior, lives on the fourth floor of Methodist Hall and was trying to sleep Feb. 15 when the building had a pipe burst.
“I was about to go to bed, and I was so close to falling asleep, so close that I could almost see myself dreaming. All of a sudden, the fire alarm went off, but that was not necessarily worrisome,” Saviers said.
Because of the cold, the fire alarms had been going off every day and would turn off after a few minutes, Saviers said. This time, however, the alarm didn’t turn off.
“We started to gather outside of our rooms, trying to figure out what to do, but then out of the corner of my eyeball I happened to walk past the fourth-floor breezeway and saw water gushing down from the ceiling,” she said. “I said ‘ooh, I bet that’s the reason the alarm is going off.’ We alerted the authorities and the powers that be, aka: facilities. They had us evacuate.”
Saviers said her room was unaffected by the water, so she was able to go back to bed after returning to the building.
Sarah Filek, acting freshman, was affected the Walker Hall evacuation one day later.
“The night before, Methodist had flooded. I had a friend staying in my room with her cat. I was taking a nap, and then the fire alarms went off,” Filek said. “Normally we ignore the fire alarms because they always go off and there’s never a fire.”
Filek said the RA’s told everyone to evacuate.
“We thought, ‘OK, maybe this is something that is actually serious,’” she said. “We all evacuated, and I went to my friend’s place in Banning until our RA texted and told us it wasn’t a fire or a gas leak, but that they were working on something and the exhaust just filled the entire building, so we were ok to come back.”
Filek said she was unsure if she wanted to go back to Walker Hall due to the heater being broken.
“I ended up going to Methodist and staying on the fourth floor right across from where the ceiling collapsed,” she said. “Also, later that day Walker Hall’s basement flooded, so that was cool.”
Filek said this year will always be remembered.
“I think this will forever go down in history as the most confusing moment of my freshman year,” she said. “At that point I was like ‘yeah, this is normal.’”
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