From The Editor
In My Day
by Rosa Jimenez
If these walls could talk—It’s a well-used phrase in conversations about old buildings. On campus, these conversations have become common and it seemed fitting that you join in as well. We hope our feature article about the Administration Building will help you recall your own favorite memories of the place.
My recollections seem distant. Fifteen years ago when I graduated, every foot of floor space was in use. Today, the first two floors buzz with activity but the stairs lead up to empty classrooms, vacant offices, and dark hallways.
Only a trickle of today’s students have attended classes in the Ad Building. This winter quarter, the only classes there are speech, video production, and a few other communications classes.
That may explain my young coworkers’ blank looks as I attempt to define why I and many other alumni have a sentimental attachment to the old place.
I tell these new graduates about how, in my day, streams of people flowed up and down the stairs, and the hallways were noisy with people talking and laughing. I tell how you could stand in one spot and hear several lectures at once echoing through the corridors.
Now, the only time I climb past the second floor is to retrieve an old photo or other relic from a fourth-floor storage room. I now see the building with their eyes. I see worn out floors, cracks in the plaster, and other signs that the building is decades past its prime. From the outside, the building looks as it has for years, but the brick facade hides a deteriorating wooden frame structure.
I understand now that my sentiment for the Ad Building is more about the people I shared it with—the friends I sat with and the teachers I listened to in class. It’s the people memories that last.
After 109 years, the Ad Building has set the stage for the memories of thousands of alumni. This Alumni Weekend, you are invited to return to the historic building to recall your own memories as the campus pays tribute to the building’s legacy.
To create our own Ad Building memento, and to put faces with the names listed in the Westwind staff column, we took this picture on the building’s fire escape.
Beginning at the bottom of the picture, Jay Ham, a 2000 business graduate, edits Campus News, Alumnotes, and Obituaries. He will work on one more issue before heading to medical school at Loma Linda University.
Gillian Fisher is the editor of the Gazette. Gillian, WWC’s director of alumni relations since 1982, is our walking alumni encyclopedia.
Amanda Gibson, a 2000 communications graduate, manages the magazine’s production. She is also a photographer so we put her to work in this area as well.
Standing at the top, Joy Chuang is a sophomore communications media major. I first knew Joy when she was three years old and lived next to my family’s home during college.
I am a 1985 communications media graduate. I have worked in fund raising and college relations at WWC for ten years, and I look forward to bringing you more stories about WWC and its alumni through Westwind.
Rosa Jimenez is editor of Westwind.