Despite his off-campus address, Cohen—who started college at 22 after finishing mandatory military service in the Israeli army—says that his ties to the Eliot House community did not weaken after his move to Inman Square.
“[The move] helped me in a way to reconnect to my House environment,” he says. “Now, I’m actually in Eliot quite a lot. I’m actually more socially involved now than I was.”
In order to ensure that off-campus students still feel like part of the community, the Office of Student Life lets off-campus residents who have lived in a House for two semesters stay affiliated with their House, McIntosh notes.
According to McIntosh, students who move off campus right after freshman year are automatically affiliated with Dudley House.
JOINING THE CLUB
Zoe O. Tucker ’13, a current Hollis resident says that she knew she wanted to live in the Co-op even before she came to Harvard. Her friend Josh Neff ’07-’08 sang the Co-op’s praises while they were traveling together in India during her gap year.
“Appreciating food and community is important to me,” she says. “Although that’s done in a different way in Houses, I don’t feel like I get much out of eating in dining halls, in an anonymous, trough-style way.”
But since the Co-op only has room for 32 students, there is an application process for living in the facility.
Interested students add their names to a waiting list, have dinner in the Co-op, attend an informal information session, and wait to be notified of the Co-op’s decision.
According to Shutzer, who lived in Leverett House her sophomore fall, it usually takes one to two semesters to be admitted to the Co-op.
Tucker is currently on the Co-op’s wait list but was sorted into Currier with her blocking group.
“I’ll definitely go to a House and be happy about it,” she says, “as long as it’s not for three years.”
A co-operative living arrangement may seem like a strange choice to many Harvard students, but that is not necessarily the case at peer institutions, Eiermann says.
“In a way, it’s bizarre that Harvard has only one of these,” he says. “Berkeley has hundreds.”
—Staff writer James K. McAuley can be reached at mcauley@fas.harvard.edu.