Not exactly an ask, but thanks for your thoughts.

As I mentioned in the previous ask, the Harkness community changes every single semester and the beginning of semester meetings are scheduled specifically to discuss and define community standards. Many co-ops and dorms adopt the “no asshole” policy, which means that everyone in the community is responsible for upkeeping the community standards. If something is going on that violates any part of the defined community rules, you can do something about it. The cooperative environment flourishes when everyone is in it together, which is part of the reason I loved my time in Harkness so much.

I had six semesters of Harkness house discussions, community standards, and community building in my past, and yes, there were good semesters and bad semesters mixed in there — ‘08-09 was a challenging year in Oberlin, but not just in Harkness. I chose to continue living in Harkness because it was a community I understood and that I cared about deeply, even if my mom thought that all the carpets needed to be steam cleaned and even if my friends were in a giant beautiful room in Talcott across the quad. My room was a haven for my things, a place I slept, and a workspace and hangout space, and as soon as I left my room, I had friends lining my hallway for late night discussions and tooth brushing parties. Perhaps that’s the case in other on-campus residence halls, too, but I wouldn’t have given up the experience of being a part of the Harkness House community for anything.

To note: 9 of Oberlin’s dormitories have been renovated in the last three years, and while no dorms or co-ops were fully renovated last summer, the public spaces in 4 halls — including Harkness — were updated and recarpeted.

- Ma’ayan Plaut ‘10, Social Media Coordinator

(P.S. Please try and keep the ask box for questions only. If you have something you’d like to say that will be seen by members of the Oberlin community, please use the #oberlin tag to continue discussion. When a question is asked and answered here, it’s only one back and forth conversation between the asker and myself, and it doesn’t allow others to get involved.)

Yes, I did live and eat in Harkness for three years. You can read about my adventures in Harkness here and here and here and here (this final one is all about my decision to live there as a first year).

As a non-substance user myself, I didn’t find Harkness to be a difficult place to live, no more than the other possible living options around campus. Harkness usually gets a bad rap, but I never ran into these issues at a higher rate than anywhere else on campus (which is also not particularly challenging in this respect). If you’re looking for a particular culture on campus, you’ll find it, but you’ll never be pressured into be a part of it if you don’t want to be.

Keep in mind also that every semester, all living co-ops have a big collective house meeting to discuss community standards (actually, all dorms have them, but they’re especially important in co-ops, where you’re all a part of a big family). 

Hark rooms are much like the open doubles in most of the other dorms on campus; they’re similar in shape and size to those in Dascomb, Barrows, and most significantly, Fairchild (or Fairkid, as we like to call it) but most of the rooms have these really cool piece of furniture with built-in pegs that allow for lofting. Also, most of the sliding closet doors have been removed by students for ease of storage (I happily put my bookshelf in my closet for two years in a row, which wouldn’t have been as easy with the doors in place).

If you want to chat more about living or dining in Hark, feel free to comment on the blog posts I linked above or email me (maayan.plaut[AT]oberlin.edu) or if you’re contemplating Fairkid or Keep, visit them on their Tumblr blogs!

- Ma’ayan Plaut ‘10, Social Media Coordinator

That’s a really good question, but a difficult one to answer. Co-ops shift in membership ever single semester, and the membership based on each student’s individual ranking of the co-ops and are placed according to a random lottery number, so the demographic of any particular co-op for next year (or the year after, or the year after that…) is sort of unknown right now. However, all the co-ops are queer-friendly (yay!).

To semi-answer your question, though: there has been a queer-centric co-ops organized as one of the themed winter term co-op options for the past three years (and presumably in the future as well). The students participating in the winter term co-op come from all over campus and all over OSCA.

If you have any more questions about OSCA, we encourage you to get in touch with them directly (osca[AT]oberlin.edu).

- Ma’ayan Plaut ‘10, Social Media Coordinator