Living with housemates is frustrating at times. Arguments erupt over who didn’t do the dishes, why the garbage is overflowing or who clogged the toilet. As intolerable as these situations may seem to the typical college household of four or five, try it with 25 people. Such was my experience living at the Lorax Manor, one of three student-owned-and-operated housing cooperatives by campus.Being a co-oper (as we so aptly called ourselves) made an indelible mark on my life because it brought many challenges. The student cooperatives are known for their killer parties and grassroots support for social justice and environmental campaigns, but they are also communities of people with various perspectives and experiences who are compelled to address differences in opinion and background. Whether it was keeping the kitchen clean, maintaining the structural integrity of the home or researching what to do about our cat’s fleas, issues at the Lorax were often discussed ad nauseam for the sake of preserving the community and respecting the recommendations of its members.
When I was a Loraxian, we forgot about numerous proposals over time that we had discussed and reached consensus on at our weekly house meetings. We had good intentions, but my fellow housemates and I found it difficult to fully realize our spectacular ploys. Nonetheless, the end results weren’t as much about the objective as they were about the process of arriving at those ends. Conversation in the Vortex eventually culminated in talk about converting the spiral staircase into a slide or punching a fire pole into the foyer. Although these plans will more than likely never happen, indulging in such silly fantasies gave us a sense of our oddball community, as we didn’t take ourselves too seriously and were all comfortable with thinking outside the box.
I owe it to dialogue within the Lorax community for events like the mustache party. People had some wonderfully creative ‘stashes that night, as did the policemen who attempted to crash the party. We had all-night raves, basement punk shows and psychedelic jamgrass sessions that brought their problems of crowd control, but more often than not, also brought Loraxians closer together.
I confess that I don’t exactly miss the perpetual issue of everyone not pulling their weight with house chores, nor do I particularly ever want to hear the jarring sound of the fire alarm again when it goes off from yet another piece of burned toast. Yet I do miss seeing the sunset from the roof any night I choose, and, oddly enough, the banter over who has gone without a shower the longest. And I miss putsing around with the compost and instigating late-night dance parties in the kitchen. The Lorax misses my dance parties, too.
Life at the Lorax was an invalu-able experience. Cooperative living required time and energy that I didn’t always have, but at least it was time and energy spent learning to cooperate with others even when you didn’t see eye to eye. The student cooperative environment was, after all, a test of my ability to think outside of myself and be aware of the needs and concerns of people around me. I encourage others to be an active member of a larger context, if not through cooperative living, then through some kind of community where you learn the value of communication and what it means to be interconnected.
Community can also exist beyond dirty dishes and clogged toilets; you just have to be open and know where to find it.
Michael Kellyn Gross is a senior at the University.