A Harvard Reunion, Co-Op Style

As Harvard's countless alumni returned to Cambridge for their traditional reunions, a different kind of reunion marked the 30th anniversary of the Dudley Co-op last weekend.

The Saturday reunion cookout featured hamburgers, barbecued chicken and potato salad--but co-op residents also prepared homemade bread, home-brewed beer, grilled tofu, and curried tofu with apples and raisins. At least one of the co-op's four dogs had a name tag reading, "Hello, My Name Is Gwendolyn" stuck on her head.

Despite the co-op's history of left-wing politics, many alumni now resemble preppies, not hippies. Their professions include psychiatry, building contracting, and teaching. One is a lawyer; his wife said he went into law to work for the good guys, but ended up working for the bad guys. Another man, who used to wear his long hair in an Indian braid and who was into Zen Buddhism, now recommends wine at the Ritz-Carlton.

More than 30 former residents came back to the reunion, many with spouses and children, to share memories and meet the younger generation. Ted Lockery '88, the current president of the co-op and organizer of the reunion, arranged an oral history session so that these memories could be recorded and made a part of the co-op tradition.

The co-op has always taken Harvard's vaunted diversity to an extreme, said alumni. There are "as many stories as there are people for why they moved here," said John Erickson '66, "but I don't know of anyone who's regretted the change."

"It was a good place for lonely isolated schizoid types," recalled Thomas A. Laage '73, placing himself in the category. He said the communal life allowed students to communicate over important matters such as preparing food, not in the purely superficial social friendships of the type that other Harvard houses promoted.

The main groups who lived in the co-op at first were foreigners, radicals, and those looking for cheap housing. However, the assistant social chairman of the Fly Club also lived there at one point, as did George Gilder, now a conservative economist. And Daemon Paine, a homeless person, came for Thanksgiving dinner in 1970 and never left until his death fifteen years later.

A student in the early years christened the building Eaton House, after the second president of Harvard. Eaton forced the closing of Harvard for a year when he ran off to Jamaica with the entire college endowment after it was discovered that the meat he served to students was maggot-ridden.

Now, the house has, "Center for High-Energy Metaphysics," painted where "Eaton House" used to be. Nobody knows why this is there or what it means.

Native Fauna

The four dogs and some goldfish are among the co-op's pets today. Three iguanas, fed on lettuce and Alpo, inhabited the basement for a while, and somebody had an alligator named Miles, which ate cockroaches. The cockroach population is legendary. One alumnus told of an entymologist from the Museum of Comparative Zoology who once visited the house because it had the rare distinction of harboring three different species of cockroaches.

Erickson said the years until the mid-60s were "the days before politics became radicalized and before the Vietnam War and before drugs, and before culture had been molded by drugs. People like Tom Rush ['63] and Joan Baez were performing. It seemed more like the end of the '50s."

The first president of the co-op, Richard Segal '60, told of amusements in the early years. "We would shut off the water in 1705 [Sacramento street, the other co-op house] around 5:00 p.m. on Saturday afternoons. We would decorate the house for Halloween with skeletons, because this was a residential neighborhood then and kids would come to trick-or-treat here."

Tom Jones dinners, using no silverware, have been a tradition since the co-op's beginning. They are usually followed by food fights. Henry M. Sandow '75-'77 described a particularly huge one, nicknamed the Battle of the Alamo. "We cleaned out the contents of three refrigerators, threw about thirty dozen eggs, dumped a five-gallon can of oil on the floor and overturned the tables. It ended when somebody got the firehose and started spraying everybody--they were all falling down because of the oil. Then we cleaned it all up."

Erikson said that he and some friends once decided to walk back and forth across the cross-walk on Massachusetts Avenue when the streelight said 'walk,' and to sit in the street when it said 'don't walk.' Laage and a friend made each other wear signs at all times for a week except when sleeping or in the shower, in the interest of truth and suffering. Laage's read "I am a pimply-faced boy," while his friend's read "I am a windbag at both ends."

Describing co-op life, Sandow said, "We'd party all night, then everybody would get laid. It was great. You can quote me on that." Certain people occasionally came to dinner wearing nothing but a tie and shoes, and at least once an entire nude table, for both sexes, was organized, said Robert R. Terrell '79. There were volleyball games every night after dinner, and Wednesday night poker games. "We played poker like it was a religion," said Sandow.

The 35 people living there during the mid-70s emptied about 20 cases of long-necked beer bottles per week, according to Sandow. There was "lots of dope. One time, we had so many plants in the windows that the Cambridge cops called the Harvard cops and told them to make us get the plants out of the window," Sandow said.

Along with people who organized the food and jobs, there was a drug steward, self-appointed. There was even a house pusher named Fat George, who didn't go to Harvard. After one pot shipment, the stems were used to make tea. "Nobody realized how strong it would be," said Edward Barna '70. "That was a very interesting night."

Co-op residents are not on Harvard's meal plan, so all food is prepared by students. Other chores, such as helping the cook, cleaning the dining room, the kitchen, and living areas, and buying food, are allocated on a point system. House residents must accumulate a certain number of points each semester in order to carry their weight.

In the '60s, Harvard paid a cook to prepare food; later, "we paid girls from the Radcliffe co-ops or from Lesley college to cook," said Erickson, a three-year resident of the co-op. At one point, after then-President Nathan M. Pusey's Swedish cook became dissatisfied with her job, she was conviced to cook for the co-op. "She cooked here for a year or two," said another former resident. "The food was good, but we had Swedish meatballs a lot."

When first established, the co-op was considered on-campus housing. Officially, only men were allowed to live there, although at least one woman would climb the fire escape every night to visit her boyfriend. In keeping with the policy of the rest of the college, coats and ties were required at dinner. "We kept a rack of tattered coats and ties by the door," said Jonathan G. Dickinson '65-'67, "and people would just fling on a coat and [loop on] a tie on their way to dinner."

Leftist politics have pervaded the co-op's history. A letter from an alumnus unable to attend the reunion recalled that members of Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) were constantly trying to recruit co-op residents. John Crooks, master during the early '70s, said he had visited the co-op on the day of Walt Disney's death and found a celebration. Co-op residents explained that Disney had been a fascist. Today, practically every room has its own copy of the Village Voice.

A former resident expressed another constant: "None of the people who lived here then or now are into being Harvard grads." he said. "They are more into doing things and changing the world."