40 Funky Years at the Dudley Coop

By Cassie Ferguson

Gazette Staff

For years, students and faculty of the women's college around the corner thought the "Center for High Energy Metaphysics" was a top-secret government research lab. Turns out that while the residents of the house with the "Center" sign across the front porch are high energy and tend toward the metaphysical, they're not government agents, but members of the Dudley Coöp.

On June 6, the inhabitants of the University-owned Coöp that likes to use an umlaut in its name will be holding a party in honor of 40 years of communal living. Among other activities, they'll be celebrating with storytelling sessions, dance parties, a ping-pong tournament, a barbecue feast, and a musical celebration.

Alumni from as far away as New Delhi have already sent their RSVPs and offered their suggestions for even more activities.

"It's not like there'll just be one hairy alum there strumming," said Coöp scribe Emily Hobson '98, a history and literature concentrator who is organizing the upcoming gathering of Coöp alums. Indeed, all Coöp-ers, both hairy and hairless, are invited to partake in a giant jam session following the scavenger hunt and barbecue. For those worried about rousing the neighbors, Hobson said that the Coöp will be inviting them as well.

In addition to the music, Coöp-ers will hold a storytelling session to hash out some of the myths and legends of the house. Were there really naked brunches? How did those mustachioed posters of Mao wind up in the dining room? Do they still hold midterm lingerie study breaks at Lamont Library? Who won the meat and tofu wars of '69?

Everyone's encouraged to participate in the scavenger hunt and time-trial races in the rickety old wheelchair that serves as part of the home-grown living room furniture collection. That living room also contains a fishtank fashioned from a bathtub painted orange with the blue words, "Happiness is Now."

If the Coöp seems like an institution at odds with the traditional Ivy League stereotype, it's because it tends to attract residents who, for one reason or another, have taken the road less traveled through their college careers.

"Most have taken time off and would rather not return to one of the Houses," noted Scribe Hobson. "There's more of a sense of community here. We function like an extended family."

The Coöperative alternative to traditional undergraduate housing also costs less, with the difference made up in the time residents put into chores like shopping, cooking, and cleaning. Or at least the time that they're supposed to put into cleaning -- The Unofficial Guide to Life at Harvard describes the Coöp as "a comfortable home-like alternative to dormitory life, especially if your home was a hippie commune which hasn't been cleaned since the last time Jerry Garcia came through."

Coöp Chronology

Two old Victorian houses make up the Coöp quarters -- a smaller, yellow one on Mass. Ave known as "05" (oh-five) and the gray main building with the "Center for High Energy Metaphysics" sign on Sacramento Street that goes by "3 Sac." The Dudley Coöp, which is affiliated with Dudley House, is one of two cooperative houses at Harvard and Radcliffe, the other being the Jordan Co-op located on Walker Street.

The 33 undergraduate Coöp members and the two resident graduate student tutors, meet for meals in the main house, which is the only one equipped with a kitchen.

The students cooks serve their food in a dining room graced with an eclectic poster collection, refrigerators, gigantic cereal boxes, and a ping-pong table. Coöp-ers, and whoever else happens to drop by for dinner, sit at a long table to break the day's freshly baked bread. Hobson said alumni are welcome to drop in for dinner any time, even during the Thanksgiving meal, which they hold on Halloween.

According to Amelia Kaplan '97, who wrote her senior thesis on the now 40-year-old Coöp, Harvard bought the house at 3 Sacramento St. in 1958. Prior to that it had gone through incarnations as both a private residence and a guest house that was visited by Teddy Roosevelt and Henry Cabot Lodge.

The men who moved into the newly formed Coöp took care of their own chores; "Harvard's Do-It-Yourself House" marveled the 1958 edition of the Harvard alumni magazine. Although not officially permitted until 1971, women moved into the Coöp in 1969, making it the first co-ed house at Harvard, wrote Kaplan.

Around the same time the women moved in, the Coöp converted from a meat-eating locale to a vegetarian place. The Coöp also gained one of its two famous unofficial residents when a homeless man, Damon Paine, decided to move in off the streets of Cambridge for a six-year stay.

The second unofficial Coöp-er, a man named Johnnie Walker, moved to the house in the late '80s and left in '92. The movie With Honors, starring Robin Williams, was based on his time there, though residents say that the Coöp is unrecognizable in the film. The Coöp held an exhibit of Walker's photographic work in the basement laundry room last fall.

"We definitely have a counter-cultural history," said Hobson. "Things are less hippie-identified now, but still distinct from other Harvard houses."

The Coöp maintains many customs that set it apart, including keeping a collective journal, the current one about to burst with poetry, prose, drawings, and pressed dandelion leaves.

"I don't think any other house has something like that," said Hobson. "We have a sense of history that is very personal and creative."