When applying for university housing before her freshman year, Jess Fried ranked Ogg Hall dead last. She had not heard much about it, yet somehow she knew she did not want to live there. But as fate may have it, she ended up living there anyway and had no idea what was in store.
Now a senior, Fried remembers some of the unpleasant things about her freshman-year home. Over winter break, someone on her floor went on a cruise and brought the Norwalk virus back for the rest of the dorm to share. Although she did not get sick herself, Fried estimated that 75 percent of her house caught the virus and spent an entire day hugging the toilet.
'People just kept getting sick and puking for 24 hours straight,' she said. 'People would take shifts; people couldn't use our bathrooms because every single stall would have somebody puking in it.'
Because of the building's age, Fried also recalled many things not working as they should. Missing floor tiles, carpet stains and broken elevators were commonplace.
'I couldn't tell you how many times I walked up and down those stairs, and the stairwells always smelled so bad. It was terrible,' she said.
Why then, with all of these bad stories, does Fried look back on her freshman year as one of the best years of her life?
Herein lies the mystery of Ogg Hall'one of the most rundown buildings on campus is also the source of many students' fondest memories.
When it opened in 1965, Ogg Hall was an all-male, upperclassmen dorm. The rooms were also built to be singles, explaining their small size and lack of across-the-hall neighbors. Glen Safford lived there for two years starting in 1969, and was there during the height of the Vietnam War riots.
'I remember one night some young people were being chased and they went into Ogg and they threw tear gas in there,' he said. 'It was kind of hard to stay in there, so for a few days we just got out of town.'
His college girlfriend and current wife Dinah Safford also remembers the National Guard and helicopter presence on campus. But she had a happier memory'Glen proposing to her in Ogg's main lounge.
'I invited her over, kind of implying that I had something for her, so she got over there and I knew she liked these Kohl's chocolate doughnuts,' Mr. Safford said.
Chiming in, Mrs. Safford said, 'Well then he had my little green box [in the doughnut bag] from Condon's jewelers.'
'She still has that ring this many years later ?? and I think history has proven it was the right choice,' he said.
While the riots and teargas have made their unfortunate return the past three years on Halloween, the wedding proposals have given way to a different display of affection. Fried, who returned to Ogg last year as a house fellow, got many calls after quiet hours involving the kind of love most college students think about today.
'I would say 60 percent of the time when it wasn't a Friday or Saturday night, the loud music and the loud noises were related to sex,' she said. 'I couldn't tell you how many times I had residents coming to the door in various degrees of undress ?? it was just hilarious.'
A lot has changed in the 40-year history of Ogg, with one of the biggest changes being the role of alcohol. When Don Schutt was a house fellow in the early 1980s, Wisconsin's drinking age was still 18, and students could drink in the dorms without getting in trouble.
'It made a lot of our social interactions a lot different because we could have parties in our dens with alcohol, which now would be unheard of,' he said.
These days, residents have to choose between going to hall-sponsored events or drinking. Fried said there were always multiple events going on, but getting students to forego drinking to attend them was definitely a challenge.
'We tried to cater to all kinds of students with all kinds of interests, but it's hard when a majority of students are going to want to go out, and it's hard putting together an event for students when we're not really sure who is going to show up,' she said.
Despite the changes throughout the years, some things about Ogg remained the same. Dinah Safford and Schutt both described Ogg's reputation as 'wild,' and Fried, as well as most students on campus today, tends to agree.
'I definitely had a very crazy freshman year, and I think all of my friends would agree with that statement,' Fried said. 'Sometimes I look back and think wow, ?? how did we make it through all of that craziness'?
Fried and Schutt also talked about Ogg's sense of community. As house fellows, both concentrated more on community-building than on discipline. And as a resident herself, Fried can attest to the strong bond that forms between the people who live there.
'Especially my floor, for whatever reason, we just all became really, really close, and we're still really close'??we hang out all the time,' she said. 'It created this ridiculous sense of community; it was like Ogg against the rest of the world.'
These days, Fried is glad she got stuck with her last-choice dorm. Though the building will come down in 2007, its spirit will live on through everyone who ever called it home.
'I think there's a certain Ogg spirit ?? anybody who's lived in Ogg will tell you that, and it's something that I will always take with me,' she said. 'Mostly I'll remember the people, though, because the people have definitely changed me in all the best ways.'
