A newsletter for alumni, students, parents and friends.
Cooperatively Yours Brazilian Students Jump into Co-op Life UC Berkeley Grants Kingman $15,000 USCA Executive Director: the search is on! Remembering June Walton Tichinin |
Ridge Project Reunion
By Tim Kaihatsu
Forty years ago this fall, the USCA opened the first co-ed living group on the Cal Campus. Bill Ball (1965-69), Rami Rubin (1965-68) and myself coordinated a reunion on October 28th on the roof of what is now called Casa Zimbabwe. Thirty of the original 128 students that inaugurated the co-op known in September of 1966 as Ridge Project returned to reminisce about the quality of the “unapproved student housing” experience in those turbulent years of the ‘60s. Receding hairlines and expanding waistlines vanished as gracefully aging co-opers looked at photo albums and computer slide shows that unleashed a torrent of hyperbolic war stories. Memories ranged from the embarrassing and lascivious to the downright gross and unsavory. Current residents of Casa Zimbabwe mingled with the ancient ones. As the young and old came together, it became all too evident that the more things seem to change, the more they stay the same.