AJ White said he is seldom surprised to walk into his living room and find it crowded with UCLA marching band members.
The fourth-year history and anthropology student’s apartment is located in the Levering Heights complex, which has been the unofficial housing for many members of the band over the years.
Located at the intersection of Levering Avenue and Strathmore Drive, the 1970s built apartment is spacious, said Paul Addleman, a fourth-year anthropology student who lives with White.
“Compared to other places around us, it’s pretty good,” Addleman said. “The building’s well kept up. We’re also very central in the apartments, and we’re not far from campus, so it’s nice.”
The complex is structured around a central, leafy courtyard, which melts into a common swimming pool area on one side. Because nearly all the tenants are UCLA students, a lot of socializing occurs most nights, Addleman said.
Jason Scapa, a fourth-year molecular, cell and developmental biology student, said he chose to live in Levering Heights because of the unity among band members there. He likens the apartment complex to “a band-themed dorm.”
“When I lived in the dorms, I never got attached to the floor, but when you’re meeting people freshman year, you get closer when you hang out.
With us, it’s just straight from the band because that was the group we spent our time with.”
Because the complex’s management is generally tolerant of gatherings, Scapa said his apartment unit has become the unofficial “band office.” Of the 27 units in Levering Heights, six are marching band-affiliated, and most of the band tenants are also members of Kappa Kappa Psi, the marching band fraternity. Scapa’s apartment is often the location for game nights, socials and informal fraternity gatherings.
“Kappa Kappa Psi used to have a band house until 1995, and now this is the band house,” Scapa said. “A lot of events occur in our apartment, and especially because we’re in Levering Heights, there is a lot of room ““ we can have anywhere from 20 to 30 people here.”
As years pass, most of the apartments owned by members of the marching band are handed down to those leaving the residence halls, White said.
Third-year neuroscience student Derek Lee, another marching band resident at Levering Heights, said he will never forget when band members helped him move a sofa into his apartment during the first week of school.
“We tied two ropes around the couch and pulled it over the balcony,” Lee said. “The band people who used to live here helped us. Any time a new group of band people move into the complex, they always have at least 10 people willing to help them.”