THE ECOLOGICAL LIVING GROUP

If you have been working hard as an environmental activist in college, you have likely felt a large amount of fragmentation in your life. The pressures on you to succeed academically and pursue a high-powered career, your human needs for social connection, and your concerns about the future of the planet may seem to battling each other for control of your time and energy. And the fragmentation you see in the society around you may be equally maddening: integrated pest management being taught in one building, while at your dorm they are serving pesticide-laden produce from Chile; reading about the values of democracy, while you look around your dorm room and realize you have no control at all over how your housing or food service are run.

In a growing number of campuses around the country, students have found a way to break through this fragmentation. Their solution has been to get a bunch of folks together, get hold of a piece of real estate, and attempt to create a community where all the aspects of their lives can be integrated, where cooperative relationships and collective actions are encouraged.

ECOLOGICAL LIVING:

One universal feature of these communities is that they experiment in ecological living. Environmentalism becomes more than just an "issue" when students have a free social space where they can implement their ideals. It can become the fabric of ones life, and the participation with others on a day-to-day basis can catalyze new ideas and collective action that is simply impossible when pursued individually. Students have made their houses laboratories for the direct application of appropriate technology, including solar collectors, passive solar architecture, recycling, composting, organic gardening, gray water systems, energy conservation, vegetarian diet, home baked bread, "green consuming", community design, and environmental activism. This experience develops the aspirations and skills that have enabled many members to make careers out of activism.

These communities have names such as Synergy, Columbae, Lothlorien, Harkness, Ecology House, Agrarian Effort, and the Green House. Their histories have proven them to be enormously influential both for the campus and for those who have lived in them.

PURPOSE:

Community works on many levels at once. The most critical factor that allows a living group to become a spawning ground for social change is that it have a declared purpose, which gives a context for environmental action.

Without deliberately recognizing that it is o.k. to bring up certain issues in the community, social norms will make such issues undiscussible, and even unperceivable. For example, how many times in dorm meetings have students talked about turning lights out to save energy, or whether majority rule is the best method for group decisions, or whether eating out-of-season produce contributes to deforestation by causing third world economies to put prime agricultural land into export crops? By having a declared purpose, the ecological living group makes the full expression of students' environmental passions socially acceptable.

It would be a fundamental mistake to conceive of purpose as a requirement for "political correctness". That would make purpose an insufferable burden. The point of a French language dorm is not that you have to believe in French, but that you have a social context to create an experience of French culture. For an environmental living group, the point is not that house members believe in environmentalism, but that they be interested in exploring it, experimenting, trying things out, and to support their housemates' explorations as well. It is not "correctness", but a feeling of social freedom that regenerates the vitality of the community. You will know the theme is working when you find yourself suddenly surrounded by opportunities for fun and creative action.

CO-OPERATION:

These communities have another universal feature: they are cooperatives. The students have taken over the operation of their food service, housekeeping, and in some houses even maintenance and construction. Instead of paying money to a bureaucracy which hires strangers to feed and clean up after you, in a cooperative the students work together to take care of themselves.

There is no better way to get to know your housemates than by working with them. Day to day life in the house develops the comradery of a camping trip. By having complete democratic control over how you live on campus, you can directly put into practice ideas about more ecological ways to eat, clean, deal with waste, energy, you name it. Instead of petitioning some bureaucrat to stop using styrofoam and disposable dishware, you decide at a house meeting and it's done.

Once it dawns on house members that they are in control, it becomes meaningful to research and discuss the ecological impacts of decisions about running the house. This changes mere ecological awareness into ecological know-how in the house.

A living group with the purpose of exploring ecological living can add a dimension of cultural diversity that is utterly lacking in campus residences. When residential life is under the control of residential staff, what results is institutional monoculture. Student control over the fundamentals of their life allows the cultural diversity within the student body to find expression and fruition.

Furthermore, by creating residential community bases for environmental activism on your campus, you create a network of students who have had a lot of experience working together and who can take energetic collective action. Control over a piece of real estate gives students the power to provide food for different gatherings, house guests, hold meetings, throw parties, provide a headquarters for activist campaigns, and so forth. It's empowerment in the direct sense.

Dormitories embody the corporate ideal of hierarchically managed society. When students discover the pleasure of democratically running their own food and housing and enterprises, they can more clearly scrutinize the premise that corporations need to be in control of our economic activities. Living in a cooperative gives students access to the larger movement for creating businesses with the ultimate in corporate accountability: they are owned by their customers and workers, who can decide directly on ecological and social priorities, without having to expend great effort on issue-by-issue boycotts and strikes to make corporations behave themselves.

IMPORTANT CONSIDERATIONS:

Consensus decision making:

The ideas of consensus decision making are essentially a formalization of the way groups of friends decide things. The group works cooperatively in building proposals everyone can accept, so that no one is overruled just because they are in a minority. The experience of creatively resolving conflicts in house meetings by consensus can totally energize everyone. People in these living groups that have developed a good consensus process will point to it as the heart of the whole community. Consensus has been used for everything, deciding who gets to live in house, room allocation, food policy, etc. There are all sorts of variations in the formalities of consensus process. For a good introduction, see the reference below. It is important that the group keep an experimental attitude toward decision making, and evolve practices that meet its own tastes.

Who gets in:

Like everything else in the community, the process for deciding who lives there can be an area of experimentation. You have the opportunity to find creative ways of allocating a limited resource (space in the house) and assembling a well functioning group.

You may be familiar with mechanical or exclusive methods (first come--first serve; lottery; "Greek" , i.e. current members admit new members; "objective", i.e. current members or outsiders review written application from prospectives). But ecological living groups have also decided by consensus, where all people who want to live in the house (current and new) get together and agree upon who should live in the house, without excluding any consideration that someone wants to bring in to the discussion. In this process, people can talk about all the real human needs that exist in the situation without mechanically ruling any out.

Mixing graduate students and undergrads has been very successful for these communities.

Size:

20 and 50 students living together creates an active, warm, and sustainable community. Less than 10 and it can become too cloistered and private; more than 60 produces fragmentation.

Socially designed facilities:

Typical dormitories with their long halls and minimalist repeated rooms are anathema to complex social interactions; so too are apartments. Fraternities and sororities, before post-war modernism, were experts at designing communal social space for students, and this knowledge needs to be revived.

You need a large kitchen, food storage area, and dining room to prepare a full meal plan for the house members and extended community. Sociable common rooms are key to building the spirit of the house. Gardening and composting space is important for experimenting in food self-reliance.

Television-free common rooms:

As incidental as a television may seem, the presence of a television in common rooms radically changes the social dynamics of the house. Casual time in common spaces is where the spontaneous social interchanges occur which allow the house to develop its own culture. Television obliterates this "habitat"; housemates turn to the TV instead of to each other for entertainment, and remain "consumers" rather than creators of culture.

FINER DETAILS:

It is very important for the house to develop its own information-rich culture, with a host of skills, knowledge, and relationships being transmitted from one generation of students to the next. Here are various possibilities to spark the imagination:

ACTIVITIES:

Appropriate technology experiments:

• Solar collectors for water heating

• Passive solar retrofitting

• Energy conservation retrofitting

• Photovoltaic systems

• Gray water systems

• Solar ovens

Agriculture- mini farm, bio-intensive garden, poultry for eggs, composting

Home making activities:

Materialism in its best sense should mean the creation of wonderful sensuous material -- nightly fresh bread, home made tofu, yogurt, sprouts, beer.

Programming:

• Theme discussion groups in the house

• House Courses-- e.g. on sustainable agriculture, urban ecology, Green movements, etc.

• House publications: Handbook, residents' Project Reports.

• Speaker Series

• Film Series

• Field trips-- e.g. to organic farms, forests, wilderness, eco-hazards.

Skills Workshops:

• Process skills for working in groups--consensus, facilitation

• Health: nutrition, first aid, CPR

• Cooking

• Organic gardening and animal husbandry

• Home weatherization

• Crafts

• Self-defense

• Mechanics and consumer technology

Social Activities:

• "Coffee House", "Talent Show", "Open Mike" etc., where students share their performance talents.

• Seasonal festivities, howling at the full moon, celebrating equinoxes, eclipses, syzygy, storms, first snow, and so forth.

• "Green Holiday Fair" where people can escape consumerism and make their own gifts at crafts tables, demonstrating ecologically benign and restorative possibilities for gift giving.

Community Service Activities:

• Create a neighborhood ecology center with info and resources on appropriate technology, neighborhood organizing, etc.

• Weatherization of homes of low-income families.

FACILITIES:

• House Library and Information Center.

• House Journal:

  A bound blank book left around the dining room that people can write anything they wish in. A great way to record house history and stimulate thought.

• Member Handbook:

  As a means to enhance this cultural transmission, a handbook for the program could be prepared and updated by the residents for those following them.

• Cultural resources -- library, house courses, guests in residence, owner's manual

  By fulfilling the goals of this proposal, the household will

• Intergenerational concern:

  Dormitories and apartments are run so as to leave no trace of past generations of students, and to leave no trace of you ever having lived there. This exemplifies our society's fragmentation of people from the past and future. This is one of the roots of the environmental crisis. So learning to cherishing the work of past members and to leave a legacy for future members is important for the sustainability of the living group and for ecological awareness. One practice toward this is to maintain an active Alumni association.

  The association will enable members to stay in contact after they graduate and continue to contribute their energy to the community, provide a means for assessing the long term impacts of the program on members' careers and lifestyles, and show current members that what they do now can have a long term impact on their own lives and future members lives.

• Non-resident members:

  By offering a full meal plan, the group can expand to include people living elsewhere as "eating associates", "boarders", "commuters", "migratory members" or other appropriate term.

• Guests in Residence:

  Invite people working in areas of sustainability to live with the group for a while. This could be set up as formal fellowships, internships, research or teaching projects, or more casually.

• Academic affiliations:

  Finding formal ways to get faculty involved in the program on an ongoing basis will enrich the experience and cultivate allies who may be helpful when the group needs legitimation and support. Options could include creating an Advisory Board comprised of faculty and community members, Departmental sponsorship, listings with undergraduate research offices for opportunities (e.g. solicit civil engineering students to build a solar energy system).

• A program endowment :

  An example is Telluride House at Cornell University. A wealthy donor created an endowment for this community, and it is controlled by Trustees including current members and alumni.

• Affiliation with other co-ops:

  If there are other co-op houses on campus, forming a federation can greatly increase the strength of the individual houses. Joining NASCO ties the house in with the whole national student co-op movement. A new possibility would be to form a network of ecological living groups through SEAC. Getting an account on EcoNet or PeaceNet would provide other networking.

• Year-round operation.

  Getting kicked out of ones dorm enforces an alienation from ones home at school, so it is critical that you be able to stay in your home any time you need to. Houses under student ownership do this as a matter of course, but under campus ownership you may need to fight for this. Any agricultural activities also would necessitate year round occupancy.

  If you get a house under the control of the campus administration:

• Patterns of ownership and control have been shown to be critical in determining whether habitations are cared for sustainably.

  - freedom to clean and furnish the house, to regulate pesticide use within and around the house, and to control heating, cooling, and water use.

  The entire effect of typical campus housing policies is to alienate students from their physical surroundings. Ecological living means the complete opposite, so if you are getting a house controlled by the administration, you may need to propose innovative new housing policies. Changes in policy should be seen as an intrinsic part of the project of forming the group. The great shame is that most students stop themselves from even imagining things they could do in campus housing by thinking "They'd never let us do that." Not true! Campaigns to change policy are not easy, but like brain surgery, with skill and experience it can be accomplished.

  In order for students to see the household as a community with a history and a future of which they are a part, as a place they will want to nurture and care for beyond their individual and short-term self-interest, the following policy components are essential.

• Furnishings and Decoration:

  Residents should have the option of taking on the furnishing and decorating of the house. House murals could be painted as artistic expressions of community life and shared goals. The character of the house would be developed and a sense of community and continuity enhanced.

• Energy and Water Budget:

  The household would be provided with an energy and water budget. The house would be responsible for any cost overruns on energy and water use and receive to its endowment any remainder from the budget left unspent. This would directly encourage the exploration of conservation measures.

• Group Lease:

  The household may choose to take out a group lease on the facility to go on a yearly or longer term basis as appropriate. Individual members would understand that they are paying for their share in a community rather than for an individual space, and each individual would have a financial incentive to ensure that the house was at full occupancy. A lease should specify year-round operation of the community.

• Grounds Maintenance:

  Campus grounds departments are likely to spray your organic garden with pesticides, throw away the decor you put in the yard, etc., so you should explicitly get sole control over maintaining your grounds.

AN EXAMPLE: Synergy House, Stanford University

Students at Stanford University interested in exploring nonviolence formed Columbae House in 1970. Living ecologically was an obvious element of not doing harm to others, and Columbae pioneered many practices, such as community gardening, baking fresh bread every night, vegetarian diet, and running as a co-op. It inspired the creation the following year of Ecology House, and the next year, Synergy House, with the theme of "exploring alternatives". Synergy was the project of a student-run course on finding alternative ways to live and work that could integrate students' social ideals with their economic needs.

Synergy opened in an old fraternity house the University had just taken over. The theme of exploring alternatives created a rich and flexible context for students to pursue their individual visions as the society changed. As the environmental movement developed new ideas and new issues came along, Synergy was ready to incorporate them. In 1975 house members in an engineering course built a solar water heating system for the roof. Members tried the biodynamic/French intensive mini-farming methods that the nearby Ecology Action center was researching. When the drought hit in 1977, Synergy built a gray-water system for its garden. When the Biological Sciences department was getting rid of some chickens in 1978, Synergy took them home and built a coop for them to become self-sufficient with fresh, free-run eggs. The back yard was a visible demonstration of nutrient cycling, with food waste going to the chickens, then to the compost, to the garden, and back to the kitchen table as corn, broccoli, chard, amaranth, comfrey, flowers, etc.

Books like Diet for a Small Planet, Small is Beautiful, Voluntary Simplicity all had concrete application in the house. The experience of consensus decision making, cooperation and activism enabled both Columbae and Synergy to take a large role in organizing the South Africa divestment movement in 1977, and the Abalone Alliance against nuclear power in 1977-80. The house has also been part of a network of safe-homes giving temporary shelter for battered women and their kids.

Interestingly, Ecology House lost its purpose within a couple years after opening (and changed its name to Terra). Their approach to ecological living did not provide a powerful enough experience of actually living in the house to make it a sustainable foundation for the community.

Being in a University-owned house offered many challenges to Synergy. In 1983 during the summer the housing office bulldozed Synergy's garden, coop, and greenhouse without telling anyone. But the students rebuilt and replanted them. Synergy's latest challenge has been an administrative decision to demolish its house and build faculty condominiums there, for economic reasons. Synergy members are seeing first hand how money can overshadow all other values in decision makers' minds, how it feels to be disempowered by an institution, and how to organize a campaign for change. By attempting to live with self-determination and commitment to a place, these students are obtaining an invaluable education in real world politics.

Synergy has offered numerous house courses, in which students have earned credit for studying: sustainable agriculture, environmental ethics, solid waste management, and political theater. Every night, residents gather in the kitchen as a dozen loaves of freshly baked bread come out of Synergy's oven. Since Synergy's founding, the 500 students who have lived there have baked a total of 30,000 loaves of bread.

The capacity of the experience of an ecological community to profoundly change students' aspirations for their own lives is evident with Synergy. A list of what Synergy members have done after living in the house includes:

Founding these organizations:

• Working Assets,

• the Center for Innovative Diplomacy

• Pacific Environmental

Working at these organizations:

• EcoNet

• the Land Institute,

• Earth Day 1990

• the Tree People

• Sierra Club

• the EPA

• food co-ops

• third world on appropriate technology and sustainable agriculture

Conference organizing:

• co-chair of the 1990 SEAC Catalyst Conference

• initiator of the First International EcoCity Conference at Berkeley in 1990

From the house came all the directors of Stanford's recycling program over the last ten years [1980-1990], and house members have gone on to start recycling programs for Palo Alto, University of Chicago, Duke University, and have been recycling directors of Santa Cruz, Cornell, and Philadelphia.

Similar stories could be told for similar student communities around the country. If such communities became common parts of campuses all across the country, they could serve to sustain and deepen the student environmental movement into whole new unexplored directions.

HOW TO CREATE YOUR ECOLOGICAL LIVING GROUP:

The practical tasks of creating an ecological living group are to first, build the group, and second, find some real estate.

Building the group means gathering interested people for the project, developing a vision of what you want to create, and organizing the tasks it will take to get a living space. You want to build on the existing components of your student community. Making it a project of your campus environmental group is an obvious step. But creating a community cuts across standard lines of interest, so you should reach out to groups and places you might not think of at first.

Finding some real estate depends equally on the circumstances of your campus. If there are already student housing co-ops, the issue would be creating one with the specific educational purpose of ecological living. If there are other theme houses on campus, then you would begin with that structure and make proposals for your vision of a theme house.

If there are suitable buildings you can rent or lease near campus, then you could follow the steps well worked out by generations of off-campus student co-ops. The network of student co-ops across the country, NASCO (below), has organized the Campus Co-op Development Corporation to help students buy their own co-op houses, by offering technical assistance and getting financing from the National Co-op Bank. They hold an annual Institute in Ann Arbor in which hundreds of students from the US and Canada come to give and take workshops on all aspects of the student co-op movement.

RESOURCES:

Organizations:

Student Co-ops: