About the Off Campus Association
OCA has been covering utility deposits for students at The University of Alabama for more than 40 years!
For many years, students would come by the OCA office, fill out a membership application as well as individual forms for each utility, pay their fees, and leave with the "Approved" forms. They would then take the forms to the various utility companies in order to have their services established and to avoid paying the deposits!
In the 1980's, when faxing was a new way to send documents we began offering our members the convenience of having us submit their service requests to the utilities in addition to covering their deposits. We also added Tuscaloosa and Northport Water deposit coverage to our services.
About five years ago, OCA introduced our online application process. We knew pretty quickly that it was going to be a huge hit! By 2008, the number of online applications greatly exceeded the number of people who applied by coming to the office! We then realized that we could take our entire operation online and in 2009 that's exactly what we did!
In 2010, we discovered that the Auburn version of Off Campus Association was no longer operational. Our Off Campus Association was not affiliated in any way with the one that had been in Auburn, but we knew that its closing left students at Auburn University without an alternative to paying their utility deposits. Since having an office and staff in another city would not be necessary due to the success of our new online business model, we realized that we could easily fill this need for students at Auburn University by allowing them to become members of our OCA. In June of 2011, we received approval from Alabama Power & AlaGasCo to include Auburn students & staff to those eligible to join OCA to have their deposits covered.
We are very excited that students at The University of Alabama, Shelton State Community College, Stillman College and Auburn University are all now eligible to join OCA! We are already planning to add more colleges and Universities throughout the state in 2012!
