Making a house a home: Seventy years of student co-ops

By Robert A. Hughes
Cal Monthly, November 2003

In the depths of the Great Depression, with job rates falling and bread lines growing, people searched for new ways to support themselves and one another. Cooperatives began springing up in many forms across the nation and, in 1933, a small group of Cal students tried this new approach to solve their need for affordable room and board. They pooled their resources and their labor to open the first student-run cooperative house in Berkeley.

The 14 founding members drew on the knowledge of those in the community, including Harry Kingman, M.A. '31, director of the Berkeley YMCA, and Clark Kerr, Ph.D. '39, then a young Stanford graduate student researching the self-help cooperative movement (which would become the subject of his Berkeley doctoral dissertation). Kingman provided more than just advice--he persuaded a Berkeley resident to rent her boarding house to these young men. The students split the rent, bought food in bulk, and shared all household tasks.

Kerr, chancellor at Berkeley from 1952 to 1958 and later president of the University of California, recalls meeting with the group and sharing what he knew about co-ops. "There were almost no organized living groups at Berkeley then, except for fraternities and sororities," says Kerr. "Berkeley in those days was really a commuter campus. The cooperative association came along as one of the very first ways to have a residential life and a more integrated campus life outside the classroom."

By the fall of 1933, the leaders of the student co-op movement were able to pool enough earnings from summer jobs to purchase a larger boarding house--the original Barrington Hall--for 48 students. The students might have been tempted to hoist a glass in celebration but, as Prohibition did not end until two months later, they perhaps confined their drinking to water.

The interest in cooperative housing was growing, and the co-ops expanded to meet the demand. By the summer of 1934, a second house was leased, and the members of the two houses incorporated as the University Students Cooperative Association (USCA). The next year, they acquired a much bigger residence, the second and better-known Barrington Hall on Dwight Way, housing 200 students.

It wasn't all smooth sailing. A financial crisis in 1934 almost resulted in foreclosure, and it wasn't until 1939--when the USCA was able to buy the second Barrington Hall outright--that the association established real financial viability. Today it operates 17 room-and-board houses and three apartment complexes and is second only to the University residence halls in providing group housing around campus.

This fall, as the USCA celebrates its 70th year of providing affordable quality housing to students, it welcomes some 1,300 new and returning residents to follow in the footsteps of the more than 50,000 co-op alumni. Former members include national leaders like U.S. Secretary of Transportation Norm Mineta '53, giants of industry like Intel co-founder Gordon Moore '50, and culinary expert Narsai David '57.

Affordability has always been a driving force in the cooperatives' appeal. "Getting that letter from Cal saying I was admitted was huge," recalls Michael Treviño '89, now assistant dean of the Goldman School of Public Policy. "But I didn't know how I could make it happen financially until I got the word I had been accepted into the co-op and discovered my room and board was going to be 30 percent less than I had been told to expect at Cal."

Costs are kept down not only through economies of scale when buying food and supplies, but because each member contributes at least five hours of work each week to running the co-op: from cooking meals, washing dishes, housekeeping, and routine maintenance, to the larger management issues involved in running what is now a $7-million-a-year nonprofit corporation. Although there is a professional non-student general manager and a small paid staff, the bottom line is the students' proud motto: "We own it; we run it."

Co-op alumni frequently remark that working within the USCA prepared them for the "real world" by giving them practical experience and confidence to go along with their academic education. "In the co-ops, you are treated like an adult and expected to behave like an adult," says Treviño. "Not that everyone does," he adds with a laugh. "But you have work shifts, you have responsibilities, and you are held to them by the people you live with. There is no Resident Assistant supervising you like there is in the dorms. As an adult, or someone who wants to be more independent, you'll find a much better environment in the co-ops."

Residents say that what really makes the system work is the mutual support and respect that co-ops generate. Students are compelled to pull together and help one another for the common good.

National Public Radio personality Margot Adler '68 recalls her experience of co-op life: "I moved into Hoyt [a women-only co-op] and I made friends for life. What I remember best was the camaraderie, the open doors, watching the first season of Star Trek on television, late nights in the common room, early morning coffee in the dining room, cooking and baking shifts, which were fun--and cleaning shifts, which weren't."

Even though co-ops have their roots in a campus culture that was mostly Caucasian, at a time when the fraternity and sorority houses were totally segregated, the USCA has been non-discriminatory from the outset. Old-time co-op alumni cannot remember a time when students living in co-op houses didn't represent a variety of ethnicities, religions, and nationalities. And, in 1966, the USCA became one of the first student housing organizations in the nation to offer co-ed living.

Residents state with pride that it was their organization that saved the Japanese Students Club during World War II. The club was a residence hall on Euclid Avenue purchased by the parents of Nisei students who could not obtain campus housing. When all Japanese and Japanese Americans were interned during the war, the USCA operated the building as a co-op, at the request of Nisei former students. The association returned the club to its owners when internment ended. The building was subsequently sold to the USCA in 1968, and is now Euclid Hall.

Sara Ishikawa '63, architect, retired UC professor, and a director of the USCA Alumni Association, spent a year of her childhood in the Tule Lake internment camp. "Most people do not appreciate how recently housing segregation existed on campus, in Berkeley, and in the Bay Area," says Ishikawa. "When I was at the Sherman Hall co-op from 1953 to 1955, housing around campus and in most of Berkeley was often not available to minorities. It was not illegal to discriminate, and discrimination was the rule rather than the exception. But the co-ops were known to be open to anyone, and at Sherman there were Caucasians, Jews, African Americans, Asians, and Chicanas."

Over time, the co-ops' early commitment to fairness evolved into a more active encouragement of diversity. During the 1970s, the USCA established several "theme houses" to support diverse segments of the student population--a move that has caused some controversy. "Many, including some of our alumni, object to what they perceive as segregation and division--and therefore, in their minds, the antithesis of cooperativeness," says George Proper '68, general manager of the USCA. "In reality, except for the two women-only halls we maintain for women who feel more comfortable in a same-gender living environment, we are still open to all. There are no presumptions or restrictions in lodging assignments--no pigeonholing."

Not everyone in the African American Theme House is black, for instance, nor do all African-American members reside in that house. And the same is true of the vegetarian house, the lesbian-gay-bisexual-transgender house, and the graduate/re-entry student house. "There are meat-eaters living at Lothlorien [the vegetarian house]," Proper points out. "But they enter forewarned not to expect anything but vegetarian meals--and God help them in dealing with their fellow residents if they foul any of the cooking utensils with meat!"

The USCA has also been trying to make the houses more open to disabled students. In 1993, Alana Theriault, who uses a wheelchair, had been sharing an apartment in Rochdale Village co-op, a complex which was one of only two residences that were physically accessible to her (the other, Fenwick Weavers' Village, also offered apartment-style housing). But she wanted more. "Rochdale didn't offer the community-living experience I had hoped for," she explains. "So I worked with the co-op's staff and board of directors, who were very supportive, and together we made the necessary changes to allow me to move into the first wheelchair-accessible room in a cooperative house. I worked with the workshift manager to be assigned appropriate duties to fulfill my five hours per week obligation. I did budgeting, prepared snacks with the assistance of my attendant, forwarded mail, and provided administrative support. I pulled my weight."

More importantly, she adds, "I sat in the dining room and argued politics, traded love-life advice, voted for house president. I watched bad movies in the TV room, sang karaoke at theme parties, and yelled about the flooded laundry room. I loved what became a very normal college experience, after having grown up being treated so differently because of my disability."

Proper stresses the differences between co-op and dorm life, and says that the two housing systems fulfill very different student needs. "Residence halls are a great entry point to campus life for freshmen experiencing their first time away from home, and it is reassuring to worried parents as well," says Proper. "But, by the end of their freshman year, many students are ready for more independence. A lot of our first-time residents are sophomores or juniors leaving the residence halls."

He believes this creates a symbiotic relationship between the University and the USCA. "To fulfill its commitment to provide housing to all incoming freshmen, UC needs continual turnover within its limited residence hall population. We are a magnet drawing older students out of the dorms."

In addition, the campus financial aid staff frequently steers economically disadvantaged students to the USCA, knowing the co-op's lower housing costs can help stretch students' limited funds. This alliance of mutual interests has resulted in some creative joint efforts over the years. In 1946, the USCA bought the historic Cloyne Court Hotel to provide additional student housing for World War II veterans returning to school under the G.I. Bill. In the late 1960s, the University purchased Cloyne Court and then leased it back to the USCA along with land on the south side of campus. The USCA was then able to secure federal HUD loans to build two major student apartment complexes in the south campus area.

The University and the USCA, with financial assistance from the City of Berkeley, are currently working on expanding the group-living houses and conducting renovations of Cloyne Court and Casa Zimbabwe. "Those renovations are part of a major project to upgrade the seismic safety of all our buildings, and to expand disabled access to our houses as well," says Proper. "You have to hand it to these students--they voted to essentially tax themselves each semester to fund a major part of it. Few, if any, will still be around when the work is completed. It is part of the co-op philosophy of contributing to the next generation, just as the past generation helped you." It's a philosophy born during the Great Depression; and, like the co-ops themselves, it lives on today.

Robert A. Hughes '62 lived in Barrington Hall and is president of the USCA Alumni Club. He retired after a 32-year career in public relations for Kaiser Permanente in Oakland.