Collectively unique
The Dudley Co-op is a collective of individuals. “Each semester a new crop of students introduces different habits, preferences, and policies to the co-op,” explains Amelia Kaplan ’97. In her undergraduate thesis titled “Don’t Spit in the Soup, We All Have to Eat,” Kaplan, a former co-oper, writes that “the co-op must function as a community in permanent flux: adaptable and transmutable, constantly reinventing itself according to the demands of its members.” Nestled in a residential neighborhood just outside Harvard Square are two late-19th century Victorians that house the 32 undergraduate students. The architecture features arched ceilings, fireplaces, and built-in bookcases and drawers, and the rooms are decorated with posters, scrolled poetry, guitars, and ukuleles. The spaces are as individualized as the students who reside there. Impeccably neat or strewn with laundry, each room takes on a character of its own. Despite the distinct personalities that inhabit the house, co-opers jump at...