Paul Diamond (senior) said he and Steven Garcia (senior), co-presidents of the Transfer Student Union (TSU), were roommates living in a transfer suite in Norris Hall when they first heard TSU was starting up again Fall 2024. According to Diamond, the goal of TSU is to bring transfer and non-transfer students closer together.
Diamond said TSU seeks to create a space open to anyone looking to make connections.
“Our events are maybe 60% or 70% transfers at most,” Diamond said. “The idea is to tie transfers into the greater Oxy community, not just isolate them as a separate group.”
Hayden Moeck (junior) said he came to Occidental as a first year in 2020, and decided to take time off before returning this past spring. According to Moeck, transfer students have a hard time making friends because most students have already established friend groups.
“[TSU is] a group of people who all have a similar experience and are a bit different from the greater Oxy community,” Moeck said. “There aren’t that many transfers, not a lot of people know what it’s like, so it’s great to have a group of people who appreciate that.”
Moeck said he was hesitant to go to TSU events when he first came to campus, but soon realized how friendly and welcoming everyone was.
“I assumed a lot of things wouldn’t be for me but that turned out not to be the case,” Moeck said. “I went to an event where we played board games in the afternoon and had a lot of fun. I kept going back after that and everyone involved with TSU became my friends.”
Diamond said he and the rest of the executive board put a lot of effort into promoting their club events in unique ways in order to get as many people to attend as possible.
“I have so much fun making things ever so slightly unconventional, putting a twist on the typical advertisement tactics,” Diamond said. “You have to figure out how to inject real human stuff into the event to make it feel like a natural, friendly gathering.”
Garcia said his favorite TSU event was the Transfer Olympics the club held last year, where people got to compete against each other.
“It’s an end-of-year celebration where we play games, have food and give out prizes,” Garcia said. “A lot of people who don’t come to most events came to that.”
Diamond said many people can feel nervous to attend social events or view it as more of a chore, but he hopes to combat this through organizing fun TSU meetups.
“A lot of people will see events in their emails and think ‘Oh maybe I would have fun, but maybe I’d just be awkward,’ and end up staying home,” Diamond said. “I want to get people outside their comfort zone and expand their circles.”
Garcia said TSU is important to him because many transfer students are on non-traditional educational paths and it is often hard for them to meet people who have a similar experience.
“I feel like a lot of students here have a very traditional path where they go straight to college after high school, but that’s not the case for a lot of transfers,” Garcia said. “Some of them come from community college, some are older, some are veterans.”
According to Garcia, transfer students are typically more willing to make new connections and put themselves out there because of their experience moving around.
“I think it takes a lot of courage to be a transfer, to leave something that is familiar,” Garcia said. “Transfer students tend to be people who are open minded and willing to take risks.”
Diamond said he transferred to Occidental from the University of California Merced, taking a gap year in between. Diamond said he wanted to stay in California, and was drawn to the smaller classroom sizes of Occidental.
“[Occidental] seemed like a place where I could get the education I want and be surrounded by people that think the same way about education,” Diamond said.
Garcia said he is originally from New York City, NY and attended Union College, which is a private liberal arts school in New York. Garcia said he experienced discrimination and toxic environments at the college, which led to his decision to transfer.
“Oxy tries to sell itself as a school with a lot of diversity, so I had this illusion that that’s what I was walking into,” Garcia said. “When I got here, I realized that wasn’t exactly true and felt a bit deceived. That made it a bit hard to transition because I felt I was back in a similar situation.”
Garcia said Occidental has decent touchstones for transfer students such as faculty advisor Carolyn Brighouse and the transfer student orientation. However, he said the college could still improve upon their resources for the transfer population.
“Transfers could use more support both academically and mentally, there aren’t many institutionally-backed spaces for transfers to lean on,” Garcia said. “Everything is completely student-run.”
Diamond said one of his goals is to help all students feel more comfortable leaving familiar environments and creating positive spaces to bond.
“The end goal of every TSU event is to have it feel like a bunch of friends getting together or meeting each other for the first time,” Diamond said. “It’s important to me to have these events feel personable.”
Contact Izzy Shotwell at shotwell@oxy.edu
