Finding a Home Away From a House

The old wooden house at 3 Sacramento Street reflects the quiet sedateness of a Cambridge neighborhood, where big front porches and cracked sidewalks create a sleepy, comfortable environment far removed from the bustle of the Square and the institutional ivy of Harvard. But once you cross the worn porch to knock on the wooden double doors, you leave the restrained neighborhood surroundings behind and enter a lively, self-contained community of forty Harvard and Radcliffe undergraduates. While not quite off-campus, students at the Dudley co-op are as far away from Harvard dorm life as it is possible to be while still paying rent to the President and Fellows.

The forty men and women--in a ratio of roughly two to one--who live in the houses at 3 Sacramento St. and 1705 Mass. Ave. share all the duties and benefits of cooperative living. Everyone devotes a few hours each week to cleaning a part of the house and preparing or clearing breakfast and dinner, which are served as sit-down meals. Lunchtime means scrounging for free leftovers in the kitchen.

Most of the rooms in the rambling, comfortably worth old houses are singles, although the newest residents share large doubles. Narrow staircases lead to art-gallery corridors where a nameless artist has adorned the walls with large-as-life figures. The quieter house at 1705 has no common rooms, and the constantly peopled first floor of "3 Sac" is the co-op's center.

The low cost of living in the Dudley co-op is one thing that attracts residents. Rent is half that of other Harvard housing, and sharing food costs with 39 others reduces expenses to half that of Harvard board.

Dudley co-op residents enjoy the advantages of off-campus living--cheapness, varied and vegetarian food, non-academic surroundings and a togetherness rarely felt in Harvard dining halls--while avoiding the feeling of isolation from a student community that off-campus residents often experience. After sharing the responsibilities of maintaining a large household, the members have developed an insulation from some tensions of the larger Harvard community, an attitude of amused tolerance toward the way most Harvard students choose to live, and an attachment to their own small group which at the outset partially excludes all outsiders.

The kitchen in Jordan J--one of the Radcliffe co-ops--is the late-afternoon nucleus of the house, where residents gather around the newspaper-strewn table for conversation and last-minute directions from the evening's chef. There is a feeling of low-key closeness as the 23 co-op members drift in to the airy dining room to share a meal which conspicuously lacks the plastic trays and cafeteria lines faced by most of Harvard's population each evening.

Living at the Jordans chops an average of $250 off the cost of a semester at Harvard, and residents unanimously agree that the food is better and more varied than in other Harvard dining rooms.

"It isn't that hard to cook something fit to eat," Jeff White '75 says. "There have been maybe two people in the three years I've been here whom I wish had never cooked."

The co-ops are especially kind to vegetarians, for meatless cooking predominates. Even when the meal includes meat, house custom dictates that the cook provide something for the "vegies," as well.

"Vegetarianism is big here," White says. "Three years ago there were hot dogs in the refrigerator all the time, and now that's not so."

Food and money may be the most tangible attractions of a cooperative, but other reasons also draw people to the Jordans and hold them there. Residents find life in a co-op more relaxed, less pressured and less status-oriented than in other Harvard dorm situations.

"It is a very positive atmosphere because everyone is around more than in a House," says Maria Kacandes '77, a resident of Jordan W. "People are willing to compromise, to talk things out. And it's not as fixed a living arrangement. People change rooms and roommates frequently."

Co-op living doesn't agree with some who have tried it. A Winthrop House sophomore who began freshman year at Jordan W found the co-op too isolated and undisciplined.

"You're very much on your own, and anyone who goes there really has to know what he or she is doing," she says. "And I'd probably get no work done, because it's too much like living at home."

This year, about sixty students have chosen to live in the three modern buildings--Jordans J, K and W--near Radcliffe Quad. Although affiliated with the Quad Houses--which provide maid service and maintenance as well as House activities--the cooperatives are self-contained in their day-to-day management, and the residents find themselves interacting very little with the Houses as they come to appreciate and prefer the more intimate environment of the co-op.

But Jordan people are no more isolated than they choose to be. There is always an "inflow of guests." You says, and the co-ops have an arrangement with House kitchens whereby they get one meal in a House each time they feed a Harvard guest.

*

The Dudley co-op and the Jordans are as different from each other as they both are from the Houses--the three Jordans have distinct "personalities" too--and the differences are reflected in the way each group views the other. From the more-detached perspective of the Dudley co-op, the Jordans are hardly distinguishable from the Quad Houses.

"The Radcliffe co-op members are just living in a Harvard dorm and cooking their own food. Anyone can do that with a hot plate in his room, scoffed a senior who has lived in 3 Sac since his freshman year. And one Jordan a resident had a similarly scornful attitude towards Dudley residents: "All they do down there is watch TV and drink beer."

Neither view is quite fair, but of the many important differences between the two co-ops--old houses versus modern complexes, student maintenance versus maid service, half-rent versus full, separation from campus versus nearness to the Quad--the greatest difference is one of atmosphere. The restrained tone of Jordan J is worlds away from the freewheeling disorder of 3 Sac.

But the individuals in the three Jordans and the two Dudley houses share a common basic attitude which has evolved from their commitment to a cooperative venture. Co-op residents have countered the anonymity and pressure of a large university by sharing the closeness of a smaller community. The experience of working together leads to a psychological commitment that holds most people in a co-op until they leave here, loyal to a way of life that continues in separation--but not isolation--from the mainstream of Harvard.