The co-op: better basement living
I admit, wholly and freely, to occasional lapses in judgment and good taste. There is evidence of this throughout my life-from my seventh-grade crush on a girl named Alexis who had a mole that engulfed her upper lip to the fact that for a good portion of 2001, I really, really liked Creed. Last year I had another one of these lapses-and I am demonstrably glad to say that it’s been corrected.
On my freshman floor, there were a few people who had a semblance of character that I do not possess. They wore tie-dye and talked about helping the environment and, from time to time, a tailwind could pick up the faintest hint of ganja wafting off of their clothing. They were great guys, but I shamelessly made hippie jokes on a regular basis. As a result, when housing time came around at the end of the year, I wasn’t surprised that they were pursuing an alternative housing solution rather than spending another year in the castles of the South 40.
At the time, this solution (the Washington University co-op) seemed a few steps down from sketchy. Various jokes about communal living filled the halls, and I asked my friends if they were soon to become the newest members of the Pi Omega Tau fraternity. They took our remarks in jest and moved into their apartment two blocks east of Kayak’s as the school year drew to a close.
Over the summer, while I worked at a Home Depot and most of the University’s undergraduate population spent three months trying to decide what to do with the next 75 years of their lives, the residents of the co-op worked to live independently. They planted gardens, studied in summer classes and began a massive renovation of their University-owned building on Pershing Avenue. At the beginning of June, the basement of the building looked like a place where you would find a meth lab and a moonshine still. Today it looks like the lounge at the Ritz.
This exceptional change-painted, walled and furnished all by student laborers-makes the co-op a perfect example of how committed individuals working together can really make a change for the better in the world around them.
The sad thing is that so many students at Washington University are either completely unaware of the co-op or have vast misconceptions about its purpose. I used to be one of those people, but again, I have lapses in judgment. The co-op isn’t a hippie commune, it isn’t a place to go if you love living in filth and it isn’t somewhere to go if you’re trying to avoid responsibility. Last year, residents had to go through an intense selection process that rivals that of most Greek organizations, and all those who live in the co-op greatly contribute not only to the quality of the institution but also to its spirit of community.
Over Labor Day weekend, the co-op had a grand opening to celebrate the end of the building process. At the event, University officials were impressed by the construction but seemed more excited about the fact that so many students not only knew how to use power tools but could use them to personally invest in their place of residence, a concept rarely seen on campus.
For many people who live in ResLife housing, this is the biggest problem. Whether a dorm is old or new, residents never seem to have a significant commitment to the well-being of their buildings. In all fairness, though, this can’t be blamed on residents when the buildings they inhabit will be destroyed and replaced in the next few years. The co-op’s greatest strength is that it proves that if students are motivated enough, they can improve their surroundings far better than the administration would ever be able to do it for them.
Campus improvement really is something that’s in the hands of its inhabitants. Some do it by increasing green space, some do it by waging recycling campaigns and some do it by remodeling crappy old basements. The point is that there are some who are getting a leg up on this process-and we should see this as anything but a lapse in judgment.
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