01/25/2024
[Long post. —Editor.]
“Happy 21st Birthday, WashU CoOp!
We are finally of legal pot smoking age! (Just kidding!) Seriously, now that we have finally legalized cannabis in Missouri, ‘co-op’s and ‘CoOp’s will no longer be code for clandestine cannabis dispensaries. Pot dealers will no longer be blackmailed into ratting out the labor activists, hypothetically speaking of course.
On January 24th, 2003, I chalked N.A.M.I. on the blackboard on the second day of my Theories of Religion class. I apologized to my class for leaving out a very important detail from the intellectual biography I had given them on the first day of class. I told them I had no business leaving out my brother Jim who is a proud member of the National Alliance on Mental Illness and active with their destigmatization campaign. I told my class that I had spent much of my fourth year at the University of Chicago as a caregiver to my brother and I am proud of him, not ashamed. I went on to tell the class that I came out of my shell when I went to UCSB (University of California Santa Barbara) and joined the University Students Rochdale Housing Project. I learned to cook for our regular pot-luck dinners, learned to garden, and I worked in a co-operative grocery store (the Isla Vista Füd [Food] COOP). My two years in the UCSB housing coop were the happiest years of my life.
After class, a student approached me and asked me to join her for coffee. She told me she liked the way I handled that, and we began brainstorming plans for a similar CoOp at WashU. I promised my full support to the initiative, and I have never looked back. Healthy living and social responsibility have always been two of our pillars of CoOp life.
WashU had previously had many informal co-ops, which is to say, half a freshman dormitory floor moved off-campus together and lived together until graduation. It was the institutional support of the University that gave the WashU CoOp its longevity. I could claim to be Founder as I have been fully invested in the WashU CoOp all 21 of our years. But the real Founder is whoever first named us The WashU CoOp, asking neither permission nor forgiveness. Our first organizational meeting was in Spring 2003 in the Hilltop Bakery in Mallinckrodt Hall. I helped publicize it, but I did not attend. I don’t know if other names were suggested, but after that first meeting, we all agreed on WashU CoOp as our name, and nothing is more natural than it. This was an assertion of our kinship with our parent University, an organic relationship of mutual dependence. A child is not a property of its parent, nor is one spouse the property of another.
In 2019, I, Jerome Bauer, Green for President of the St Louis Board of Aldermen, earned 18.5% of the vote with a platform decrying University-Neighborhood Encroachment, and advocating for Student-, Worker-, Staff-, Faculty-, Alumni-, Neighbor-, and Customer-owned Co-Operatives. I had many street-corner discussions with sympathetic faculty and students. I floated the following proposal on my Campaign page: Let the University expand its program of ‘Neighborhood Stabilization’ housing loans to include not only faculty and staff, but also students after their first year. These loans would be forgivable after 5 years, unless the recipient graduates or leaves the University’s payroll, in which case they would be required to sell or donate their house, not to the University, but to the North American Students of Co-Operation (NASCO), or to a for-profit housing Co-Operative (let’s call it WashU CoOp Network). These loans would be available to members of the University Community who live within two miles of any University Campus, including all residents of this neighborhoods who would be eligible to buy shares in the housing Co-Operative, contribute work-hours, and have a say in the operation of the co-operative business. Loan recipients would be encouraged to pool up to three loans per housing unit, in accord with city law, requiring no more than three people unrelated by blood or marriage to live in a single housing unit.
In 2005, I was offered a $7,500 loan, forgivable after 5 years, which would have required me to sell my home to the University at their idea of fair-market value. A little bird told me not to take it. If I had, I would be long gone by now, and the University would own my home. In 2019, a new faculty member was offered an $8,500 loan with similar terms. In 2023, a University Staff member interviewed on the radio told of her $12,500 forgivable loan. Let’s propose $12,500 as the amount for our CoOp housing loans. A $37,500 down payment would make local housing affordable even for the low-income students the University is trying to attract with its new low-income tuition-remission program. This would enable the students that they are trying to attract to build wealth and be loyal University Alumni.
The WashU CoOp Network as I envision it would be a diverse network of many kinds of co-operatives, including privately owned residences and apartment buildings. Let there be houses for all the Campus Ministries, including the Herring House, with an intentional community for the WashU Catholic Student Center Interns. Let our network include houses for survivors of clerical abuse. Let us include houses for people of diverse political ideologies and special interests as well as disabilities. Let each constituent co-op be represented in an inter-co-operative council, which would work with existing organizations such as the Skinker-DeBaliviere Community Council and the Rosedale Community Council. Our network would provide an alternative to the fraternity system, which some say is in crisis. I am pleased that the current Washington University Administration including Associate Vice-Chancellor Dr. Rob Wild (an old friend of the WashU CoOp) are looking for creative ways to reform our University. We hope that WashU will serve as a model for others to emulate.
Happy 21st Birthday, WashU CoOp! Let’s wish ourselves another 21 years at least! The WashU CoOp: Saving Our Planet Since 2003 with a Kind Heart and a Sense of Humor!” — Jerome Howard Bauer
