Living in the dorms has provided many college students with some of the most cherished memories of their academic careers. Perhaps others counted down the days until signing the lease on their apartment or house and finally truly being on their own. Still others eagerly move into their chapter houses and settle in for years among their Greek families. Sometimes, especially at KU, it may seem like these are the only options. But it turns out, that if you look in the right places, you will find another world of housing right here in Lawrence, KS: the student cooperative.
Many readers may be familiar with food or other retail cooperatives (such as REI or the Community Mercantile, right here in Lawrence). Unlike these businesses, housing cooperatives are not for-profit organizations. In fact, the ones in Lawrence are owned by a non-profit organization called the University of Kansas Student Housing Association (http://www.uksha.com). These four houses (Olive House, Ad Astra, Sunflower House and the Indiana Street Co-ops), along with Koinonia, a cooperative located in the basement of the ECM, are generally geared towards students who are interested in getting involved in and educated about the co-op movement.
The goal of these houses is to provide students with a living community in which they play a larger leadership role. Residents democratically run each household and decide and divide rules and roles through weekly meetings and votes. Residents are also expected to participate in the betterment of the household by doing weekly chores and helping with projects around the house.
According to Shannon McGill, a fifth-year Jayhawk who currently lives in Ad Astra says that, because living in a cooperative affords residents more say in their lifestyle, she is able to live more intentionally.
“[Living in a cooperative] promotes forming bonds and living by your ideals,” says McGill. “It’s been a way for me to actually live the way I intend to.”
Source: http://adastralawrence.info
But more than this, cooperatives housing fosters a sense of community different from what one may find in a dorm or other situation. This is because living in a cooperative is about much more than convenience. Sure, just by virtue of living in a group, students are able to cut costs in their daily lives. Many of the cooperatives on campus buy food in bulk to make food less expensive for the residents. But choosing to live in a cooperative, especially a sustainability-oriented co-op like Ad Astra is making a very intentional decision about a life that you want to lead. The community of the house is so strong because everyone living there has made the same choices.
“It’s a lot more about intentional living and living with like-minded people and kind of agreeing on a collective lifestyle,” says McGill.
The cooperative lifestyle also provides students with invaluable life skills. Courtney Schwartzbeck is in her third year at KU. She lived in Koinonia over the summer, but the experience impacted her greatly.
“You learn new skills, just by living with people from different backgrounds,” says Schwartzbeck. “Whether it be through cooking or maintenance or gardening or whatnot, you just pick up things like that.”
McGill agrees and adds that one can become a lot better of a communicator through their time living at a co-op.
“In most cooperatives there’s really strong communication and you learn how to address problems without screwing people over or fully putting the blame on someone,” she says. “Overall it’s just a lot healthier of a way to live.”
I heard about this lifestyle just over a week ago, and perhaps many of you heard about it just over three paragraphs ago, but it turns out that student-housing cooperatives have a rich history at the University of Kansas. According to UKSHA, the first housing cooperatives at KU date back to 1919, and the Olive House (the oldest housing cooperative on campus) was founded in 1938 (then it was called the Jayhawk Cooperative). Since then, although the co-ops’ popularity has ebbed and flowed, there has been a sustained interest, and today they are booming.
The cooperative lifestyle is not just limited to the Western world. Far from it, actually. As McGill points out, community-based living was at the foundation of many successful cultures far before the development of modern-day Western culture. Schwartzbeck thinks it goes back to the start of civilization.
“We started as more community-oriented living as a species but we’ve moved away from that a lot, especially in Western culture…. it’s a way to break the isolation that we form around ourselves in western culture,” she posits.
But the tradition is not just deep, it’s also broad. A quick Google search show websites for housing co-ops in Austin, Santa Barbara, East Lansing and a slew of other towns and cities all over the country. Just as support is increasing for natural foods and cooperative retail stores, more and more people (specifically students) are taking interest in living a more cooperative lifestyle in student housing co-ops.
So perhaps you are completely happy with your living situation. Maybe your dorm community or apartment situation is offering you everything you need. But perhaps you are looking for more. Perhaps you want to take control of how you live, and pursue your own ideals and values through those choices. For many that want to find a deeper community, and potentially deeper meaning from their living situation, a cooperative could be a great option. It was certainly a good choice for McGill:
“You don’t just have to live in this one particular societal structure, you have the freedom to create your own and find people who also share your ideals. [Living in Ad Astra] has been a way for me to actually live the way I intend to.”