There once was a time when dorms didn’t exist, and John Wooden coached an unknown team in the men’s gymnasium. Sorority life required skirts and bobby socks, and friends met at Krup’s soda shop, not Diddy Riese.
“It was a small school, so people knew each other and saw each other,” said Sheila Cameron, a UCLA alumna. “Of course, the village isn’t like it is now. It was a small town. … The corner of Westwood and Wilshire used to be Truman’s Drive-In, where the carhops would come out to the cars and you could sit out with your date and have a malt.”
Spirit was also central to being a part of the campus social scene. Between traffic-stopping rallies on the corner of Westwood Boulevard and elaborate card stunts by football crowds, spirit permeated much of student life.
“There were no dorms on campus except for Mira Hershey Hall. So to have any kind of a feeling of belonging, one joined a sorority or a fraternity or some sort of activity,” Cameron said.
As well as being a member of Alpha Delta Pi, Cameron was one of 20 or so women who made up the Trolls. The self-described “nutty” group was responsible for drumming up spirit with its unusual garb and high energy. Becoming a Troll was unique in itself.
“I was in the sorority house at Monday night dinner and one of my close friends … led the group through the dining room, and here come 20 or 30 women in white sheets and Dixie cup hats,” Cameron said. “They had this, it looked like a hammer, but it was cardboard, and they’d go, “˜Dum dum dadum,’ and wham-o they gently tap you on the head and whisked you away.”
Among other spirit activities, the Trolls helped with the annual Frosh-Soph Mud Brawl. The Trolls, along with their male counterparts, the Kelps, also took part in the bygone yearly tradition of repainting the Big C, a large cement letter C located where Sproul Hall now stands.
While Spring Sing took place in the Hollywood Bowl with Ronald Reagan as master of ceremonies, and Bel-Air was empty enough to hang out in and drink beer, college was still a chance to be a part of something, to be around others of that age and have fun.
“It really wasn’t that different from today,” Cameron said.