Good Deal at Any Price

Communism never came at a lower price.

The Dudley Co-operative Society, better known as the Co-op, was originally established in 1958 as low-cost alternative housing for the male students of Harvard. Although it is now populated by thirty-one students of all sexes, the Co-op has remained true to its inexpensive roots.

Within two Victorian houses, students do all their own cooking, cleaning, and decision-making. The Co-op is set up on a points system, so that residents must fulfill a certain amount of points every two weeks by signing up to do chores like preparing soup and salad for the night’s dinner, washing dishes, and cleaning the bathrooms. Vegetarian dinner is served at 6:30 nightly, but the kitchen is always open for a quick sandwich or snack. Decisions to order produce or buy a new appliance are all made cooperatively.

In part because of the self-sustaining nature of the Co-op, rooming for this semester is $1,818, compared to $2,664 for traditional residential housing. Co-op board fees don’t show up on term bills, but are set and collected entirely within the Co-op. As a result, the savings from board are even more dramatic: $690 at the Co-op versus $2,309 in residential housing.

With such steep savings, it seems obvious why there’s always a waitlist of students vying for a spot in the Center for High Energy Metaphysics, as the sign out front of one of the buildings reads. But it’s unclear whether it is ultimately the low-price or group love of the Dudley Co-op that attracts multitudes of Harvard students.

“For me, it’s not about cutting cost. It’s a really nice perk, but it’s also something that I’d be willing to pay more for,” transfer student Ana K. R. Vollmar ’08 says.

Anne-Marie Zapf-Belanger ’09 agrees with Vollmar that money was not her main motive for moving to the Co-op. “The fact that it costs less is nice,” says Zapf-Belanger, who moved into the Co-op at the beginning of this fall. “For most people, I suspect it’s more of a bonus than a reason to move here.”

Dudley isn’t just a year-round home for term-bill evaders and free spirits. Summer boarders, like their term-time counterparts, are at the Co-op for a variety of reasons.

Tyler G. Neill ’07-’08 first moved into the Co-op in the summer of 2005, following his sophomore year in Quincy House. “It’s definitely cheaper than Harvard housing or renting your own place,” he says.

While Neill’s primary motive for living in the Co-op was to discover whether he wanted live there for the following term, Edward Jou ’08 was simply looking for a cheaper housing alternative. This past summer, Jou opted for the Co-op over GSAS housing when he found that both options cost a similar amount, but the Co-op granted access to a kitchen and daily-cooked vegetarian dinners.

Despite their differing initial reasons for choosing to live in Dudley, both came to appreciate the unique community and lifestyle of the Co-op.

“It definitely turned out much better than I thought it would be,” Jou says, who found that doing chores was the most difficult adjustment to living in the Co-op. Although he discovered that everyone in the Co-op wasn’t as welcoming as he had hoped, he liked the fresh, daily-baked and organic food, as well as feeling “like you’re supporting something good.”

Though Jou (who now lives in Pforzheimer) hadn’t originally considered continuing to live in the Co-op during the school year, he contemplated it after his summer in Dudley. While the lower cost of the Co-op would have been a factor in his decision to become a term-time Co-oper, Jou said, “I definitely would want to stay in the Co-op because I like the environment.”

Neill ended up living in Dudley in his junior year. The following summer he received free housing at Quincy through his summer program but still wanted to be a part of the Co-op. He found the answer to this problem through the quarter-boarding system, which allows non-Co-opers to pay a quarter of the board, do a quarter of the chores, and eat a quarter of the meals in the Co-op. Neill altered this option slightly by half-boarding.

“If I had free food in Quincy, I would have still quarter-boarded,” Neill says.

This fall, Neill is taking a semester off. He plans on returning to the Co-op next semester, and his motivation, like that of Vollmar, Zapf-Belanger and most Co-op residents, comes from something far purer than a couple thousand dollars.

“I wouldn’t live at Harvard and not live in the Co-op,” explained Neill. “I think the opportunity to let a community evolve outside of the House system produces something with much more significance than a price difference.”