Re: higher density cohousing = dorms
From: Craig Ragland (craigraglandgmail.com)
Date: Wed, 29 Mar 2006 16:00:37 -0800 (PST)
THANKS FOR THE MEMORY !!!

My college dorm experience (1979) was seriously unlike my cohousing
experience (2000-present). After my freshman year, I enthusiastically left
Anderson Hall... (http://www.redlands.edu/x756.xml). That 200 student dorm,
spreads  in suites on 3 floors in 2 large wings. I was overwhelmed by loud
music, beer, football fever, drugy/boozy strangers sleeping in random
"public" places, messy shared bathrooms, broken furniture, stolen mail, etc.

As a sophomore, I moved into a shared student household occupied by 7 men (
http://www.redlands.edu/x744.xml). We took over a former greek house which
was owned by the college. This was MUCH more like cohousing than my dorm
life ever was... In the dorm, our "rules" and operations were
administration-driven, they were "enforced" by cynical Residential Advisors,
who did as little as possible to keep the peace. In our shared household, we
formed and kept agreements amongst ourselves and developed OUR culture,
rather than being dominated by the broad campus culture that drove dorm
life.

I have very fond memories of being one of the "Billings Boys" as we called
ourselves. That was a really great year... FYI: the college administration
kicked us out and the house reverted back to become a normal frat house
again. I don't really know whether our campaign to impeach the college
president had anything to do with that decision...

On 3/29/06, Grace Kim <grace [at] schemataworkshop.com> wrote:
>
> Cohousing is a lot like living in a college dorm.
>
> And I've heard many people in both Denmark and the US who currently live
> in cohousing relating it to that experience.  Cohousing is the "adult
> version" of living w/ people that are in a similar situation

Results generated by Tiger Technologies Web hosting using MHonArc.