On an early spring afternoon, you can see a family running up and down the empty stairways of Butte Hall, getting exercise in the vacant building. Then you wonder, what is the building even used for?

Butte Hall, named after Butte County, has been unattended since 2023. It was once home to the Behavioral and Social Sciences department and was built in 1972. 

The former BSS building began experiencing asbestos issues and underwent temporary closures from 2021 to 2023. However, the building eventually closed and the BSS program set off to its new destination. 

“The College of Behavioral and Social Sciences was outgrowing Butte Hall,” said Randy Southall, the assistant vice president of Facilities and Capital Projects. “They were set to move into the new building.” 

Even though it looks vacant, the fourth floor is fully operational. It houses the data center for the entire campus, including computer networking and some of the Division of IT. 

There are plans to move the data center out of Butte Hall, but the correct funding hasn’t been approved. 

Once BSS moved out, as highlighted in the 2030 Master Plan, Butte Hall was set to serve as a surge space for construction workers during the construction of the new BSS building. 

“A master plan is an aspirational plan,” Southall said. “Kind of like a roadmap, but with big lofty plans. Whether you get to all of them or not, it gives you a roadmap to guide you.”  

As new buildings get replaced or repaired, programs and people need a place to set up shop, Butte Hall is where they go. 

After BSS moved out, Project Rebound moved in. 

Project Rebound is a program for formerly incarcerated students, allowing them to take classes, receive an education and better themselves. They were in Butte Hall for less than a year before moving to the Student Services Center. 

“But in the meantime, from the time of the master plan to today, [former] President [Gayle] Hutchinson made the decision to create a Division of IT,” Southall said. “She had the vision to create one central division to make a more robust, comprehensive program, to better suit the students.” 

Although the 2030 Master Plan was created in the spring of 2020, it is not outdated. It is considered a working blueprint, meaning some things might not be accomplished because the demand isn’t the same, but it can still be considered until there is a need to create an updated version. 

It took over a year to create, and so the demand at the beginning may have changed over time. That doesn’t mean the information won’t be relevant; it’s a guide to finding the right solution. 

The Master Plan shows that at the end of Butte Hall’s life, it would be taken down and replaced with a new residence hall.

“University Housing absolutely wants [Butte] to be a residence hall, because one thing that the plan didn’t talk about was Whitney Hall being offline,” Southall said. 

Whitney Hall was closed in 2023 after the 2030 Master Plan was introduced. 

The master plan illustrated the construction of a new residence hall, even with Whitney Hall still open, due to the high enrollment numbers recorded in 2017 and 2018. 

The enrollment numbers for 2017-18 were around 17,400, and dipped to 13,500 after the pandemic. 

“We’re trying to keep [Butte Hall] open, because that is our surge space,” Southall said. “It’s a luxury to have a building available like that.” 

Butte Hall stands as one of the tallest buildings on campus, with seven floors and nearly 89,000 square feet of space. According to the Campus Buildings directory, the grass surrounding Butte Hall was planted after the building’s completion, prompting students to walk through it. This created some of the pathways used today, as they paved over the ‘desire paths’ and made walking to Butte Hall more accessible. 

Dr. Dory Schachner, who has been teaching at Chico for 20 years, lectures in the psychology department and taught in Butte Hall for a single year, but doesn’t recall any negative aspects of the location. 

She taught one class in Butte more than 15 years ago and left because the psychology department moved her to Modoc Hall. 

“The bottom floor had these glass cases that had some interesting posters in them about agricultural or environmental science, and it was a field I knew nothing about,” Schachner said. “I remember, if I got there early, I’d stand in the hall and read those because it was something I didn’t know anything about.” 

The benefits of lecturing in a hall that isn’t specifically for your department are that you get to learn more about different things you would have otherwise missed. 

Dr. Schachner notes that there was a student death in Butte Hall in March 2018. 

“I didn’t see anything, but I did hear some students say that they saw the person jump and some students said they saw the person on the ground,” Schachner said. “So I ended up cancelling classes that day, because students were really shaken up.” 

The student identified was 20-year-old  junior Zacahary Biggins, according to a past Orion article.

Depending on how state funding looks in the next few years will determine how Chico State will move forward with Butte Hall. For now, it will remain open as the home of the data center and Chico State’s Division of IT. 

Elizabeth Perez can be reached at [email protected]