From its sustainability and diversity to its online-classes and expansion, Butte’s efforts to foster a true college environment are everywhere. But there is one thing the school does not have that many students on other campuses know almost like home—the dorms.

Yes, the dorms, which are typified in the media as Pauly Shore’s domain for way longer than normal, the site of floor-wide female topless pillow fights and where a freshman walks down the hall nude because someone stole his towel while he was in the shower.

Fortunately, most students do not have to deal with the worry of “Will I like my roommate?” or “which fraternity will I pledge?” Some even had the good fortune of looking around Butte and Glenn counties to find a place to live. But other Butte students do not have the luxury of being just a car-ride away from the Butte College campus.

So when someone flies across the country to attend Butte and lands without a place to stay, he jumps at the first opportunity to get a roof over his head. Those are exactly the conditions that 12 members of Butte’s football team faced when they decided to move into a three-bedroom Chico apartment.

The result was a quasi-dorm frat house feel with 12 guys fighting over rooms, two showers and two toilets. When it all shook out, there were five men sleeping in the bedrooms while the remainder had to make do with couches and softer spots of the carpet in the living room to lay their heads.

“We didn’t have a living room. It was so dirty,” explained Alex Courtney, who is from Florida.

Not only was personal space non-existent but personal hygiene was frequently neglected in those first several weeks until a few guys got there own places. Early in the group’s stay in the house, there was an anonymous phantom crapper that put the toilet out of service for two weeks. The bowl blockage led to all the guys opting to use the other fully functional bathroom, which ended when a suspicious brown mark on the wall next to the toilet appeared.
According to roommate Alfonzo “Fonzo” Simmons, a Georgia native, “Bubba [Branden Rankin] is the dirtiest and A.C.[ Alex Courtney] is the nastiest.

“Bubba doesn’t wash and I swear he brushes his teeth with a rag.”

Rankin, from North Carolina, countered Simmons by stating “Ronnell [Wright] is the dirtiest. We could take a vote and it would be him.”

Then there are the notorious kitchen arrangements, which anyone with roommates can easily relate to. The standard, who does the dishes, who is cooking, what’s for dinner and when doesn’t apply in this house.
The dirty dishes, pots and pans are stacked on the counter in the corner next to the sink as high as the shelves above them. The lack of clean dishes might be due in part to differing dish ideologies in the house; epitomized by Florida natives Watts’ method of getting the guys to “all pitch in a few bucks and we pay a girl to come over and wash the dishes.”

While Courtney prefers to abide by the motto: “If you want to use a pot, you gotta wash it.”

And as far as cooking goes the roommates agree that they mostly just provide for themselves and occasionally Rankin or Watts cook. “We do some spaghetti, egg sandwiches… Aca Taco and Mickey-Dees,” Watts said. “We try to keep it low budget.”

The roommates are all generally home before 6:30 on weeknights, at which point the house comes alive.

“It gets loud,” said Ronnell Wright from Georgia. “[We] usually have some music going with the bass, and we had a flat screen hooked up to surround sound, but somebody stole it.”

Butte student Felisha Raymond, a frequent visitor to the house, was startled upon hearing that there is a vacuum in the house.

“I would like to see more cleaning,” she said. “Just use it [the vacuum]. It’s really loud. they’re constantly horse-playing, and acting out WWE.”

Of course, these Southern boys have to bring it back to the Bible belt by holding a household pre-game prayer.

“We sit in the living room and put Josh’s mom on speaker phone for blessings before the game,” Raymond explained

The apartment has indeed provided its occupants with tons of parallel moments to Animal House and dorm life, from unsightly bathrooms to a stolen television. The group of 12 now whittled down to five has fostered a friendly southern bond.

As Watts explained, “We are a real brotherhood, I couldn’t live with anybody else.”