Undergrads Seek A Room of Their Own

About 30 students dine together around at a long wooden table every night at 6:30 p.m., helping themselves to communal dishes of homemade vegetarian cuisine and freshly baked bread.

Above the doorway to the dining room, the instructions “Don’t spit in the soup—we’ve all got to eat” are painted in an elaborate cursive script.

The Dudley Co-operative Society has been dishing up home-cooked food since 1958, when it was established as an alternative housing option at the University.

The Co-op, which is a ten-minute walk from Harvard Square, is divided between two clapboard 19th-century Victorian houses on Mass. Ave.

Martin Eiermann ’10, a co-president of the Co-op, says he objects to his title.

“We’re pretty anti-hierarchical here,” he says as he sits in the Co-op’s library, which evokes the organization’s historic connections to Harvard’s liberal underground.

According to Eiermann, student protesters hatched some of their plans in the late 1960s—including the 1969 takeover of University Hall—in the safety of the Co-op.

Joining the Co-op—one division of Dudley House, a community for students at the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences as well as a small number of undergraduates—or renting an apartment allow students to escape on-campus living. Despite common perceptions that living off campus is difficult, costly (especially in the Boston area), and lonely, students who have left the Houses say that the rewards of independent living outweigh the occasional inconveniences.

A DIFFERENT COMMUNITY

In terms of Harvard housing, Jennie M. D’Amico ’10 has seen it all: House life, the Dudley Co-op, and an apartment near Central Square that she shares with her fiance, a dental school student at Boston University.

She and her roommate were placed in Cabot, but they left when they were taken off the Co-op’s wait list in their junior year.

According to Joshua G. McIntosh, associate dean of Harvard College for student life, approximately 100 undergraduates choose to live off campus every year—either at the Co-op or in an apartment of their own.

About 30 juniors and seniors canceled their housing contracts this past year to move off campus for either a semester or the whole year, and five to 10 upperclassmen submitted relocation forms to the Dudley Co-op.

D’Amico describes her time in the Co-op as “the first time I felt like I belonged to a real community at Harvard.”

Just before her senior year, D’Amico moved into an apartment near the Co-op with her boyfriend. Now, they share an apartment in Central Square because they wanted their own space, she says.

It is a sentiment shared by others who chose to find off-campus housing.

Roy Cohen ’10, a former Eliot House resident who moved into an apartment near Inman Square this year after spending the fall semester in Argentina, says that his experiences overseas changed his perspective on living spaces.

“Up until junior year, I loved the dorms,” he says. “It was really about needing my own space, my own room, and living with people who want that, too.”

MEALTIME TRADE-OFFS

Despite popular belief, living off campus is sometimes cheaper than living in a House.

Harvard’s Financial Aid Office awards financial aid by default with the College’s room and board fees included.

Students at the Co-op pay room fees to the College, while they pay their board fees to the Co-op. According to Co-op co-president Megan A. Shutzer ’10, a Crimson editorial writer, board fees to the Co-op are significantly less than what the College charges.

“Living in an apartment and buying and preparing my own food is also much cheaper than living on campus,” D’Amico says. “Also, the Co-op buys in bulk, so you’re getting a lot for your dollar there.”

Although apartment living may seem like a breath of fresh air for students annoyed with House rules, D’Amico mentions that apartment living is not always so easy. It involves many responsibilities that the Houses automatically fulfill, she says.

In exchange for a cheaper board fee, Co-op students lose swipe access to all Harvard dining halls.

“But my fiancé and I pick up each other’s slack when one of us is really busy or stressed out—such as now, when I’m finishing my senior thesis,” D’Amico says. “And I always like what’s on the menu!”

LIVING IN ISOLATION?

A common concern among students is the possibility that alternative housing isolates students from the Harvard undergraduate community.

In an e-mailed statement, McIntosh describes the Houses as “the epicenter of the undergraduate experience.”

“A House plays a much larger role than simply serving as a place to sleep and eat,” McIntosh writes. “It is difficult to separate the Harvard College experience from the residential experience.”

Despite his off-campus address, Cohen—who started college at 22 after finishing mandatory military service in the Israeli army—says that his ties to the Eliot House community did not weaken after his move to Inman Square.

“[The move] helped me in a way to reconnect to my House environment,” he says. “Now, I’m actually in Eliot quite a lot. I’m actually more socially involved now than I was.”

In order to ensure that off-campus students still feel like part of the community, the Office of Student Life lets off-campus residents who have lived in a House for two semesters stay affiliated with their House, McIntosh notes.

According to McIntosh, students who move off campus right after freshman year are automatically affiliated with Dudley House.

JOINING THE CLUB

Zoe O. Tucker ’13, a current Hollis resident says that she knew she wanted to live in the Co-op even before she came to Harvard. Her friend Josh Neff ’07-’08 sang the Co-op’s praises while they were traveling together in India during her gap year.

“Appreciating food and community is important to me,” she says. “Although that’s done in a different way in Houses, I don’t feel like I get much out of eating in dining halls, in an anonymous, trough-style way.”

But since the Co-op only has room for 32 students, there is an application process for living in the facility.

Interested students add their names to a waiting list, have dinner in the Co-op, attend an informal information session, and wait to be notified of the Co-op’s decision.

According to Shutzer, who lived in Leverett House her sophomore fall, it usually takes one to two semesters to be admitted to the Co-op.

Tucker is currently on the Co-op’s wait list but was sorted into Currier with her blocking group.

“I’ll definitely go to a House and be happy about it,” she says, “as long as it’s not for three years.”

A co-operative living arrangement may seem like a strange choice to many Harvard students, but that is not necessarily the case at peer institutions, Eiermann says.

“In a way, it’s bizarre that Harvard has only one of these,” he says. “Berkeley has hundreds.”

—Staff writer James K. McAuley can be reached at mcauley@fas.harvard.edu.