7 ms·

I spent 3 years living in one of the co-ops briefly mentioned in the article ("In 2013, the administration took over the student-run anarchist house and painted

I spent 3 years living in one of the co-ops briefly mentioned in the article ("In 2013, the administration took over the student-run anarchist house and painted over the old murals."). I wouldn't call it an "anarchist house" but it sure as hell was a lot of fun to live there. I painted some of those murals that are now apparently gone. We built a giant illegal loft in our room to make it two stories (which we would disassemble for a day every year when the fire inspection happened). We did some stupid and illegal shit, sure. But the sense of community was unparalleled. The alumni association owned the house, so we had to deal with all the maintenance. We came back to campus a week before everyone else every year to work on the house. We cooked and cleaned for ourselves. I've never since experienced anything close to that same feeling of communal pride. It was a mess, but it was our beautiful mess.

sanj 4y ago
This was wonderful to read. I lived in a similar beautiful mess, but it still exists! https://pika.mit.edu/ https://pika.mit.edu/
- whymauri 4y ago
  my favorite pika stories are about Pi Kappa Alpha brothers from the South showing up and being extremely confused about the naked people
  - sanj 4y ago
    My favorite story is about the attempt to recreate cold fusion, resulting in a Nova special referring to it as “a secret physics society”. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=7GPA_JZxT5w https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=7GPA_JZxT5w
- ztaira 4y ago
  I lived there too! What a wonderful mess it was lol One of my friends from high school was in Stanford's LSJUMB and while visiting him I got to briefly visit a couple of the Stanford co-ops. What struck me most was how similar the co-ops were despite being on literal opposite sides of the country. If there had been a magic wormhole-esque[0][1] portal that _actually_ linked the houses together, I would've only been mildly surprised Long live pika! Long live shenanigans! [0] http://archive.boston.com/business/technology/articles/2011/08/22/wormhole_links_mit_and_stanford/ http://archive.boston.com/business/technology/articles/2011/... [1] https://engineering.stanford.edu/news/wormhole-connects-stanford-and-mit https://engineering.stanford.edu/news/wormhole-connects-stan...
  - musicale 4y ago
    I believe there used to be a "wormhole" static video conference linking cafés at MIT and Stanford. You could sit down at a table at MIT and talk with people at Stanford or vice-versa. It's a great idea that should be deployed not just at universities but other places as well.
- theicfire 4y ago
  First time I've seen this show up on HN. I lived there too :). I still live in a co-op to this day.. actually one a few blocks away from Stanford.
pigscantfly 4y ago
I was in the co-ops and also a frat in the early 2010's. I knew about XOX, SAE, and KA but not theta delt or sigma chi -- let alone french house, slav, haus mitt, or casa italiana. Aside from undergrads, the school will miss out, too -- my pledge class founded thirteen companies in the few years after graduation, and I hired several friends from EBF for my own -- but the administration will probably never realize what they've done to the undergraduate culture. This is really sad news; I hope the rest of the co-ops escape -- most of the housing options are extremely uninspiring to actively anti-social and not great for mental health, as the article points out.
- majormajor 4y ago
  I like how we're immediately jumping to "this is going to ruin the financial success of future graduates and thus hurt future fundraising." "Thing I like must be directly responsible for this other thing that happened later" is sad to see from someone from what's supposed to be one of our nation's best schools. Turning high school into middle school and college into high school, etc, in terms of adult supervision isn't my favorite thing in the world, but it's also something that been happening since long before you made it to a college campus in the early 2010s. So it's not very clear that it's going to cause corporate or economic pain. The social arguments are much more compelling, but also far harder to unwind. Parents have been both complaining about but also calling for this sort of thing for decades.
  - pigscantfly 4y ago
    It was a (possibly-overly-blunt) attempt to tie this cultural shift to outcomes the bureaucracy cares about, but absolutely the biggest loss is to the undergraduate culture and future students' experiences. Both future grads and the university will obviously be fine financially.
    - majormajor 4y ago
      My theory is that the root cause is the financialization and rat-race-ification of everything. You gotta go to college to make a good living. You gotta go to a TOP college especially. You gotta work your ass off in high school to get in. And so everyone just is told their whole childhood to compete harder and harder in this race to the bottom and there's no more room for interesting experiences since a truly interesting experience isn't guaranteed to sound as good on an application as a boring "interesting experience" run-of-the-mill extracurricular schedule. Leaving in room for insanity and creativity is counter to what this money-above-all-else societal push for undergrad education wants. But hey, we gotta do that because if we don't, China will! It's not the students who benefit from having to work twice as hard to get the same degree.
hyperbovine 4y ago
Meanwhile, the coop system at Berkeley is alive and well.
- selectodude 4y ago
  Same with UCLA. Those places were a total whirlwind.
- musicale 4y ago
  Stanford may have the Axe, but Cal still has student-run housing.
  - tharko 4y ago
    Cal has the axe
    - musicale 4y ago
      Yep, 2021 was the worst Big Game loss for Stanford since 2004. No Stanford Axe, no student-run housing, and apparently no fun on the Farm. Sad.
- yojo 4y ago
  God bless the USCA (or BSC, or whatever they call it now). It breaks my heart that other students don’t have that opportunity for community. It’s not for everyone, but by far the most interesting years of my life were living in the Berkeley coops 2002-2005.
  - PopAlongKid 4y ago
    But you were still too late for the infamous Barrington Hall[0]. When I first arrived in Berkeley in the early 1980s, a hitchhiker from Europe who had traveled across the country with me somehow immediately found Barrington as a place where he could crash for a week while he visited the area, this was pre-internet times of course. [0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barrington_Hall_(Berkeley,_California) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barrington_Hall_(Berkeley,_Cal...
ChadNauseam 4y ago
Hey, I lived in a very similar system at Michigan State University. It was a ton of fun and I made some of my best friends in that house. Really sad to hear that Stanford painted over the murals.
RcouF1uZ4gsC 4y ago
> We built a giant illegal loft in our room to make it two stories (which we would disassemble for a day every year when the fire inspection happened). We did some stupid and illegal shit, sure. But the sense of community was unparalleled. Sounds like toxic “bro” culture. First of all, fire safety regulations are one of those things that are written in blood so speak. Casually bypassing them is not something to be celebrated. Second, is it any surprise that people who come out of this environment then end up creating startups which skirt regulations, sell out their users privacy, and do “stupid and illegal shit”.
every 4y ago
My wife and I met over 4 decades ago here [1]. She was the food buyer and I a weekly dinner chef... [1] https://collegehouses.org/listings/21st/ https://collegehouses.org/listings/21st/
- verall 4y ago
  Collegehouses is still going strong, 21st went through some renovations a couple years ago :) Something different from what is mentioned in the article is that the Austin co-ops are not owned by alumni orgs and are not officially affiliated with any school or university.

sanj 4y ago

This was wonderful to read. I lived in a similar beautiful mess, but it still exists! https://pika.mit.edu/ https://pika.mit.edu/

whymauri 4y ago
my favorite pika stories are about Pi Kappa Alpha brothers from the South showing up and being extremely confused about the naked people
- sanj 4y ago
  My favorite story is about the attempt to recreate cold fusion, resulting in a Nova special referring to it as “a secret physics society”. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=7GPA_JZxT5w https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=7GPA_JZxT5w
ztaira 4y ago
I lived there too! What a wonderful mess it was lol One of my friends from high school was in Stanford's LSJUMB and while visiting him I got to briefly visit a couple of the Stanford co-ops. What struck me most was how similar the co-ops were despite being on literal opposite sides of the country. If there had been a magic wormhole-esque[0][1] portal that _actually_ linked the houses together, I would've only been mildly surprised Long live pika! Long live shenanigans! [0] http://archive.boston.com/business/technology/articles/2011/08/22/wormhole_links_mit_and_stanford/ http://archive.boston.com/business/technology/articles/2011/... [1] https://engineering.stanford.edu/news/wormhole-connects-stanford-and-mit https://engineering.stanford.edu/news/wormhole-connects-stan...
- musicale 4y ago
  I believe there used to be a "wormhole" static video conference linking cafés at MIT and Stanford. You could sit down at a table at MIT and talk with people at Stanford or vice-versa. It's a great idea that should be deployed not just at universities but other places as well.
theicfire 4y ago
First time I've seen this show up on HN. I lived there too :). I still live in a co-op to this day.. actually one a few blocks away from Stanford.

pigscantfly 4y ago

I was in the co-ops and also a frat in the early 2010's. I knew about XOX, SAE, and KA but not theta delt or sigma chi -- let alone french house, slav, haus mitt, or casa italiana. Aside from undergrads, the school will miss out, too -- my pledge class founded thirteen companies in the few years after graduation, and I hired several friends from EBF for my own -- but the administration will probably never realize what they've done to the undergraduate culture. This is really sad news; I hope the rest of the co-ops escape -- most of the housing options are extremely uninspiring to actively anti-social and not great for mental health, as the article points out.

majormajor 4y ago
I like how we're immediately jumping to "this is going to ruin the financial success of future graduates and thus hurt future fundraising." "Thing I like must be directly responsible for this other thing that happened later" is sad to see from someone from what's supposed to be one of our nation's best schools. Turning high school into middle school and college into high school, etc, in terms of adult supervision isn't my favorite thing in the world, but it's also something that been happening since long before you made it to a college campus in the early 2010s. So it's not very clear that it's going to cause corporate or economic pain. The social arguments are much more compelling, but also far harder to unwind. Parents have been both complaining about but also calling for this sort of thing for decades.
- pigscantfly 4y ago
  It was a (possibly-overly-blunt) attempt to tie this cultural shift to outcomes the bureaucracy cares about, but absolutely the biggest loss is to the undergraduate culture and future students' experiences. Both future grads and the university will obviously be fine financially.
  - majormajor 4y ago
    My theory is that the root cause is the financialization and rat-race-ification of everything. You gotta go to college to make a good living. You gotta go to a TOP college especially. You gotta work your ass off in high school to get in. And so everyone just is told their whole childhood to compete harder and harder in this race to the bottom and there's no more room for interesting experiences since a truly interesting experience isn't guaranteed to sound as good on an application as a boring "interesting experience" run-of-the-mill extracurricular schedule. Leaving in room for insanity and creativity is counter to what this money-above-all-else societal push for undergrad education wants. But hey, we gotta do that because if we don't, China will! It's not the students who benefit from having to work twice as hard to get the same degree.

hyperbovine 4y ago

Meanwhile, the coop system at Berkeley is alive and well.

selectodude 4y ago
Same with UCLA. Those places were a total whirlwind.
musicale 4y ago
Stanford may have the Axe, but Cal still has student-run housing.
- tharko 4y ago
  Cal has the axe
  - musicale 4y ago
    Yep, 2021 was the worst Big Game loss for Stanford since 2004. No Stanford Axe, no student-run housing, and apparently no fun on the Farm. Sad.
yojo 4y ago
God bless the USCA (or BSC, or whatever they call it now). It breaks my heart that other students don’t have that opportunity for community. It’s not for everyone, but by far the most interesting years of my life were living in the Berkeley coops 2002-2005.
- PopAlongKid 4y ago
  But you were still too late for the infamous Barrington Hall[0]. When I first arrived in Berkeley in the early 1980s, a hitchhiker from Europe who had traveled across the country with me somehow immediately found Barrington as a place where he could crash for a week while he visited the area, this was pre-internet times of course. [0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barrington_Hall_(Berkeley,_California) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barrington_Hall_(Berkeley,_Cal...

ChadNauseam 4y ago

Hey, I lived in a very similar system at Michigan State University. It was a ton of fun and I made some of my best friends in that house. Really sad to hear that Stanford painted over the murals.

RcouF1uZ4gsC 4y ago

> We built a giant illegal loft in our room to make it two stories (which we would disassemble for a day every year when the fire inspection happened). We did some stupid and illegal shit, sure. But the sense of community was unparalleled. Sounds like toxic “bro” culture. First of all, fire safety regulations are one of those things that are written in blood so speak. Casually bypassing them is not something to be celebrated. Second, is it any surprise that people who come out of this environment then end up creating startups which skirt regulations, sell out their users privacy, and do “stupid and illegal shit”.

every 4y ago

My wife and I met over 4 decades ago here [1]. She was the food buyer and I a weekly dinner chef... [1] https://collegehouses.org/listings/21st/ https://collegehouses.org/listings/21st/

verall 4y ago
Collegehouses is still going strong, 21st went through some renovations a couple years ago :) Something different from what is mentioned in the article is that the Austin co-ops are not owned by alumni orgs and are not officially affiliated with any school or university.