Editor's note: Roughly one year after this story's publication, OU announced plans to replace the towers. The Daily republished this story in the wake of this announcement.
In August 1967, OU alumnus Ian Butler, then a second-year student, stood in the shade of a newly constructed, titanic trio of towers. The New England native had traded milder summers for sweltering central Oklahoma heat, and that month, the highs consistently hovered well over 90 degrees most days.
Hefting his luggage from the ground and pressing onward, Butler headed toward his housing assignment, McCasland Tower in Adams Center, the first of the new residential buildings to be constructed.
“It was very nice, well appointed. It was also more expensive than just about everything else at the time,” Butler said. “I didn't have a problem with it.”
Unlike many future and current OU freshmen faced with mold and flooded hallways, Butler said the only surprises the tower had for him were culinary — including mildly perplexing Tex-Mex cuisine, which would occasionally be served in the cafeteria that formerly occupied Adams Center’s bottom floor.
“What the — it’s like something is wrapped in toilet paper,” Butler recalled thinking when he was first offered a tamale in the cafeteria line. “What the hell is this?”
A year later in 1968, first-time resident Kathy Bass moved into Walker Center, just east of Adams. At the time, Bass said the move was a definitive upgrade from other dorms on campus, like Cate Center, which first welcomed freshmen as an all-women’s dorm in 1949.
“My first impression of everything was really nice — the fixtures, the bed, the desk, all of it,” Bass said. “It was nicer than Cate was at the time, with our own suite bathroom instead of one bathroom for the whole floor.”
When the towers were constructed, they became the largest on-campus housing option available. Today, Adams has the capacity to house 908 students, with Couch sporting 1,396 available beds and Walker offering 1,404.
Bass said the towers had another major advantage over Cate at the time — air conditioning. When she returned to the towers over 40 years later, however, Bass said what had seemed like luxury compared to other on-campus housing had turned into mediocrity at best.
“I helped my nephew move out of the towers within the last few years, and I was surprised,” Bass said. “Maybe back then it was just that my perception was better than it really was, but it wasn't as nice as I remember. … The carpets and the walls especially look really aged.”
Bass is not unique among alumni who believe the towers are standing past their expiration date. Sheffra Stauder, who lived in Walker Center from the fall of 1981 to the spring of 1982, said she was surprised the towers had not been renovated more extensively when she returned to help her daughter move into Walker in 2010.
“When I moved my kids in,” Stauder said, “all I could think was, ‘Wow, I can't believe they haven't remodeled.’ Really, I can't believe they haven't been totally torn down and rebuilt.”
Love for the towers may be approaching an all-time low among current residents as well. Thanks to recent and extensive issues with mold and a full-blown flood, many first-year students are left scratching their heads as to why they are being excluded from one notably superior housing option, Cross Village.
Even among former residents who appreciated how “roughing it” in rooms lacking luxury made their college experiences more memorable, the same question is asked time and again — how much longer will the towers stand? As more freshmen are assigned to aging rooms, more come out with horror stories like the one pre-nursing freshman Natalie Berryhill punctuated with a sharp admonition:
“They really suck, I’ll say that. I cannot wait to move out.”
‘I knew it wasn't going to be a great experience’
On Feb. 10, 2020, Berryhill was busy preparing for a jam-packed week of classes — including four exams in five days. She was preparing to run a daunting gauntlet for a first-year student still transitioning to a college course load, managing the precious commodity that is study time.
Berryhill, a resident of Adams’ McCasland Tower, was already familiar with OU’s freshman housing — she stayed in the dorms in 2015 when she attended a cheer camp as a high school freshman, and both of her parents had shared their own horror stories about living in the towers during the ’90s. Her mother even lived in the same tower when she was a student.
“My mom walked in to move me into the cheer camp, and she was like, ‘Oh my gosh’ — they looked the exact same,” Berryhill said. “Down to the upholstery on the bedding and tiles and sinks and toilets in the bathroom. … I was blown away they hadn’t changed in 25 years.”
One dreadful tale her parents shared involved a mold infestation in their dorms, Berryhill said, a chapter that repeated itself just a year before Berryhill’s arrival, when four different sickness-causing molds were found in Couch Center.
The issue of mold in aging college dorms is not unique to OU, however. A Facebook group titled “Break the ‘Mold’” was formed in February 2019 to bring attention to the issue, and members — including many OU students and their parents — regularly post articles that have highlighted mold stories from universities like Florida State, North Texas and Florida Atlantic.
In her first semester, Berryhill said she fell victim to the same fungus that afflicted her parents years prior, when some of her shoes and clothing started to grow mold.
“When I found out I was going to be living in the towers and not the residential colleges, I was pretty bummed because I knew it wasn't going to be a great experience,” Berryhill said. “I didn't really know what that entailed until now.”
As Berryhill pored over her nutrition textbook on that seemingly uneventful February afternoon, she heard the resident in the room just above hers turn on their shower.
At least, that was what it sounded like — what struck her as strange was that, before then, she had never heard that noise.
With the steadily increasing severity of a biblical plague, just months after the mold, the newest member of the Berryhill clan to attend OU was the victim of a fresh catastrophe.
“Five minutes kind of go on after I hear it, and we start to hear a commotion in the hallway,” Berryhill said. “We stepped outside, and our hallmates next door to us — their air conditioner had busted and … there's just water everywhere, blowing and spewing out of the air conditioner.”
The students on McCasland’s third floor leaped into action to prevent the rapidly advancing cascade from destroying textbooks, clothing, electronics and more. When the flood began, Berryhill said, the residents thought they might be able to turn off the water and stop the current. Unfortunately, the flood would continue until the hall was covered in at least an inch of dirty, hot water, which Berryhill estimated to be about 90 degrees.
“It was a depressing moment for a couple minutes,” Berryhill said, “because we realized that this week was going to be hell on earth.”
When the shock subsided, many of the students were left wondering what had caused the sudden swamping that displaced them — Berryhill herself was essentially homeless for two days.
The university said the age of the tower was to blame, with old plumbing exacerbated by the dramatically changing Oklahoma weather.
“Adams is an older building with aging infrastructure,” said ShaRhonda Maclin, assistant dean of students, in a February email. “When we experience rapid temperature changes like we did over the weekend, with temperatures in the 70s and the next day near freezing, it causes the pipes to expand and contract, which can cause older pipes to burst.”
'Freshmen would pour in'
The towers are certainly aged — Adams was the first to be built in 1964, with Walker and Couch following in 1966 — but they are not even in the top 10 oldest housing facilities among OU’s Big 12 peers. A majority of residence halls at the University of Texas predate Adams Center’s 1964 construction, and four of Iowa State University’s many housing options were originally built before 1930.
OU is home to two of the newest housing constructions in the conference, in fact, with the Headington and Dunham residential colleges opening in fall 2017 and the much-maligned Cross Village, branded as a luxury housing option for upperclassmen, opening a year later in fall 2018.
These housing options have left some freshmen wondering why a majority of them continue to be relegated to the towers and their many maintenance issues. Berryhill said she felt many freshmen would jump at the opportunity to stay in Cross, which currently bars freshmen from its 1,200 available beds — about a third of the three towers’ combined maximum occupancy of 3,708, according to an OU spokesperson.
“I've heard Cross is very nice. And a lot of my friends, we don't understand why nobody lives there,” Berryhill said. “I think (not allowing freshmen) is a huge factor in why Cross is failing.”
Berryhill is not the first to suggest that OU’s administration open Cross Village to freshmen to address the complex’s dismal occupancy rate, which has hovered around 30 percent since September 2018.
Steve Hicks is the president of Provident Oklahoma Education Resources, a subsidiary of Provident Resources Group, of which he is the CEO. Provident Oklahoma — which funded the construction of Cross — is currently locked in a legal clash with the university, alleging breach of contract when OU declined to renew commercial and parking leases at Cross.
In a letter provided to The Daily, Hicks wrote that Cross had offered to open its doors to students who developed or are at risk of developing health issues due to mold in the towers. In the letter, Hicks wrote that Cross would honor the rate the students were already paying to live in the towers with no increased cost, and offered to assist students with moving in.
The university’s administration declined the offer, according to the letter.
“While the university’s leadership should be exploring all necessary near-term and long-term solutions, that does not appear to be the case,” Hicks wrote. “Students and parents paying big fees to the university should be appalled by the administration’s handling of this issue. It only makes matters worse that university officials have refused my offer to move at-risk freshmen to the Cross Village complex, which is up to health and safety standards.”
Despite the structures showing their age, a university spokesperson said OU does not plan to close the towers to new residents anytime soon.
“At the current time, the university plans to keep the towers operational,” said Kesha Keith, director of media relations. “OU administration is mindful of the aging infrastructure of the towers and continues to monitor them closely, just as all housing accommodations are.”
For now, students lamenting their time in the towers will be left to ponder potential solutions.
“I’ve always wondered, ‘Why doesn't the university tear down a tower at a time and rebuild?’ And in that time, those students in that tower can stay at Cross,” Berryhill said. “Cross is such a nice complex, and I kind of think it's a bit absurd that nobody is staying there.”
With Cross Village’s more than 1,200 available beds and low occupancy — and the similar maximum occupancy numbers for each of the towers — Berryhill’s idea seems plausible if explored by the university and Cross ownership. However, with both parties clashing in court and no plans to close the towers, cooperation may be difficult to secure.
“If they were to open it up, freshmen would pour in,” Berryhill said. “I don't know a single freshman that I've come into contact with that’s like, ‘Yeah, I want to live in the towers.’ Nobody wants to live here.”
'There's a point where it's going to start making a difference'
Berryhill’s harsh refrain — that no one would ever choose to live in the towers — was not always the case. Like Bass and Butler two decades prior, Darren Alexander was originally assigned to live in the Cate dorms in 1985, still without air conditioning. Before he moved to campus from rural Kansas, he received a last-minute letter offering him a spot in the towers, which he accepted immediately.
“We didn't have a lot of problems with any type of maintenance issues or anything,” Alexander said. “We didn't have a lot of problems and had a real cool RA, and it sure beat the heck out of living in the Cate rooms.”
Alexander said the community formed on his floor not only helped create some of his fondest memories, but also spurred his recollection of one impactful and historical event.
“I was in my room watching on … this little 13-inch television when the space shuttle (Challenger) exploded that morning,” Alexander said.
Sooner basketball legend and three-time NBA champion Stacey King was a common sight on the floor, Alexander said. Since King’s girlfriend at the time lived one floor below in an all-women’s hall, King would often come to Alexander’s floor and watch TV in the lounge area.
Other alumni have said the closeness and less-than-stellar quality of the dorms are endearing when looking back. Cameron Cox, who lived in Adams Center’s Tarman Tower in 2005, said the “crappiness” of the towers was a kind of motivation for residents to flex their creative muscles to entertain themselves and others.
“My roommate and I were and still are best friends, and we got our bean bag chairs … and just sat in the elevator for hours and just talked to everyone in Tarman Tower,” Cox said. “And yeah, that's super weird — I accept that — but at the time everyone loved it and were just like, ‘What are you doing here? Just meeting people? OK, cool.’”
Cox said a year in a potentially sub-par room serves as a stop-gap, giving students one last opportunity to “destroy stuff” and party in a way they might expect to be part of the college experience.
“It's probably good that it is kind of crappy because it allows everyone just to get that out of their system,” Cox said. “If it’s crappy, then you're more inclined to go get out there and learn, explore and probably sabotage. By the time I got to Traditions (Square Apartments) in my second year, we didn’t destroy anything. There were like two parties, and that’s it.”
Stauder agreed that sharing the experience of “roughing it” in freshman dorms was fun in retrospect, but she said eventually students will start to consider freshman housing options more seriously when looking at other universities.
“At Arkansas and OSU, they have the little apartment-styles with different big rooms, and you hear about how nice they are,” Stauder said. “If you picked based on where you're living, you would pick Arkansas and OSU over OU any day. There's a point where it's going to start making a difference.”
Cox said the expectations of students attending college today — and paying much more to do so — also play a factor in the need for improved dorms.
“With how much tuition is nowadays, if you’re going to be going to OU or another prestigious university, you should kind of expect a little bit upfront that isn’t terrible,” Cox said. “And they are (terrible), they have to be — there’s no way they’ve improved them much since I’ve been there.”
Both current students and alumni seem to agree it is time for the towers to go, even those who were among their first residents. When that day comes and the towers are toppled — mold, rusting pipes and all — Butler said he hopes to be ready for the spectacle.
“I would definitely get my folding chair out if they decided to close the buildings,” Butler said. “Not necessarily from any animus, but I do love to see buildings come down.”
Correction: This story was updated at 12:50 p.m. April 14 to reflect the correct name of the space shuttle that exploded in January 1986.
