Ex-Cal State Leader Cobb Honored at Dorm Naming

FULLERTON —  Recalling her own undergraduate years, former Cal State Fullerton President Jewel Plummer Cobb found it somewhat ironic Wednesday that the school’s residence hall was being named in her honor.

“I graduated from high school in 1941, and I recall the excitement when I received my letter of acceptance from the University of Michigan and learned I was going to live in university housing,” Cobb recalled.

But the excitement turned to disappointment, she said, when she and the other black students were placed in a segregated, off-campus apartment. It was one reason that she finished her undergraduate studies at Talledega University in Alabama, one of the nation’s largest black colleges.

“It has been for me an unusual and warm experience having a living complex named after me,” said Cobb, who was Cal State’s president from 1981 to 1988.

The 66-suite, $7.5-million housing complex, which opened in 1988, was named for Cobb during a one-hour ceremony attended by 120 people Wednesday. During her tenure, she pushed for state legislation that allowed the school to sell bonds to build the complex, which now houses 396 students who pay $3,249 a year to live there. It is the school’s only on-campus residence hall and was something that Cobb felt was needed to enhance the university’s atmosphere.

“The primary intellectual interchange (in college) occurs in the classroom and the laboratory between the student and the professor,” she said. “But education doesn’t get turned off like a water faucet when the student leaves the classroom. What happens after the student leaves the classroom is important, and living in on-campus housing plays no small part in making enjoyable the student’s academic year.”

History professor Lawrence de Graaf said that among longtime faculty, Cobb’s dream of building a residence hall was met with cynicism and that she should be congratulated for persevering.

“There were those who felt building it would be equivalent to balancing the government’s budget,” he said.

Located in the northeast campus, the four-story building has a patio area, basketball court and parking structure. Residents are selected on a first-come, first-served basis, with international students, honor students and athletes given preference, according to Darlene Stevenson, the university’s director of housing and residential life.

The residence hall “has worked out very well for the university and the students,” Stevenson said. “It has become a focal point for developing a sense of community here on campus.”

Resident Lisa Katz said she was amazed at the enthusiasm of the other residents when she moved in last year.

“People who say Disneyland is the happiest place on earth are wrong,” she said.