Racial unrest, murder, and move to Malibu
By 1957, when M. Norvel Young was named president, the young college faced serious problems, not least of which was the high cost of expansion in South Los Angeles. The area around the Vermont Avenue campus was developing issues including rising crime and urban decay, and racial tensions had arisen that led to the 1965 Watts Riots.
Before the worst of the tensions began, President Young had begun to look for suburban sites to expand the university's footprint. In 1966, a committee was formed to look at potential locations, including sites in Westlake Village and Calabasas. Pepperdine favored the Westlake Village location until the Adamson-Rindge family, who owned hundreds of acres near Malibu, offered to donate 138 acres (56 ha) and to sell 58.7 adjacent acres. Despite concerns over building costs on the mountainous site, the school decided to move forward based on its prime location and potential for raising donations, accepting the land in Malibu in 1968.
In March 1969, Larry Kimmons, a Black teenager from the South LA neighborhood, was killed by Pepperdine campus security officer Charlie Lane following a verbal argument. Protests ensued, with Black students opposing the college's administration. Some have attributed the killing to racism.
In December 1970, student activists threatened to burn down the campus, even setting small fires in three buildings. Students later occupied the academic life building, leading to a standoff with the Los Angeles Police Department that was defused by negotiations with Vice President William S. Banowsky.
Construction in Malibu began on April 13, 1971, and the new campus opened in September 1972. The campus and many of its buildings were planned by Los Angeles–based architect William Pereira, who had also designed the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the University of California, Irvine, and much of the University of Southern California. The construction of the Malibu campus was made possible largely by gifts from Blanche Seaver, the wife of Frank R. Seaver and heir of his oil-drill manufacturing fortune, who donated to Pepperdine more than $160 million over her lifetime. The undergraduate college was officially named after Seaver in 1975.
The university retained and continued to expand its original Vermont Avenue Campus, building a new academic building there in 1970, and redesigning the curriculum to serve its more urban setting. Much of the undergraduate liberal arts program, however, moved to the new Malibu campus. In the decade to come, the Vermont Avenue Campus transitioned away from its residential model, and in 1981 it was sold to Crenshaw Christian Center, whose minister, Frederick K. C. Price, then oversaw construction of the "Faith Dome," then the largest-domed church in the United States.
