[dougmccune]

I spent 3 years living in one of the co-ops briefly mentioned in the article ("In 2013, the administration took over the student-run anarchist house and painted over the old murals."). I wouldn't call it an "anarchist house" but it sure as hell was a lot of fun to live there. I painted some of those murals that are now apparently gone. We built a giant illegal loft in our room to make it two stories (which we would disassemble for a day every year when the fire inspection happened). We did some stupid and illegal shit, sure. But the sense of community was unparalleled. The alumni association owned the house, so we had to deal with all the maintenance. We came back to campus a week before everyone else every year to work on the house. We cooked and cleaned for ourselves. I've never since experienced anything close to that same feeling of communal pride. It was a mess, but it was our beautiful mess.

[pigscantfly]

I was in the co-ops and also a frat in the early 2010's. I knew about XOX, SAE, and KA but not theta delt or sigma chi -- let alone french house, slav, haus mitt, or casa italiana. Aside from undergrads, the school will miss out, too -- my pledge class founded thirteen companies in the few years after graduation, and I hired several friends from EBF for my own -- but the administration will probably never realize what they've done to the undergraduate culture. This is really sad news; I hope the rest of the co-ops escape -- most of the housing options are extremely uninspiring to actively anti-social and not great for mental health, as the article points out.

[majormajor]

I like how we're immediately jumping to "this is going to ruin the financial success of future graduates and thus hurt future fundraising."

"Thing I like must be directly responsible for this other thing that happened later" is sad to see from someone from what's supposed to be one of our nation's best schools.

Turning high school into middle school and college into high school, etc, in terms of adult supervision isn't my favorite thing in the world, but it's also something that been happening since long before you made it to a college campus in the early 2010s. So it's not very clear that it's going to cause corporate or economic pain. The social arguments are much more compelling, but also far harder to unwind. Parents have been both complaining about but also calling for this sort of thing for decades.

[watwut]

Isn't that pretty much definition of nepotism? Those jobs would go to someone, they wont disappear out of economy. However, they should go to "the best person for the company" rather then the school friend. I can understand giving jobs and promotions to friends, it is tempting. I am surprise over it being treated as a "something to strive for".

[FunnyBadger]

At this point they are trying to "program" in Woke. That's why they are shutting this stuff down.

[sanj]

This was wonderful to read.

I lived in a similar beautiful mess, but it still exists!

https://pika.mit.edu/

[ztaira]

I lived there too! What a wonderful mess it was lol

One of my friends from high school was in Stanford's LSJUMB and while visiting him I got to briefly visit a couple of the Stanford co-ops. What struck me most was how similar the co-ops were despite being on literal opposite sides of the country. If there had been a magic wormhole-esque[0][1] portal that _actually_ linked the houses together, I would've only been mildly surprised

Long live pika! Long live shenanigans!

[0] http://archive.boston.com/business/technology/articles/2011/...

[1] https://engineering.stanford.edu/news/wormhole-connects-stan...

[whymauri]

my favorite pika stories are about Pi Kappa Alpha brothers from the South showing up and being extremely confused about the naked people

[theicfire]

First time I've seen this show up on HN. I lived there too :). I still live in a co-op to this day.. actually one a few blocks away from Stanford.

[every]

My wife and I met over 4 decades ago here [1]. She was the food buyer and I a weekly dinner chef...

[1] https://collegehouses.org/listings/21st/

[verall]

Collegehouses is still going strong, 21st went through some renovations a couple years ago :)

Something different from what is mentioned in the article is that the Austin co-ops are not owned by alumni orgs and are not officially affiliated with any school or university.

[hyperbovine]

Meanwhile, the coop system at Berkeley is alive and well.

[yojo]

God bless the USCA (or BSC, or whatever they call it now).

It breaks my heart that other students don’t have that opportunity for community. It’s not for everyone, but by far the most interesting years of my life were living in the Berkeley coops 2002-2005.

[musicale]

Stanford may have the Axe, but Cal still has student-run housing.

[selectodude]

Same with UCLA. Those places were a total whirlwind.

[ChadNauseam]

Hey, I lived in a very similar system at Michigan State University. It was a ton of fun and I made some of my best friends in that house. Really sad to hear that Stanford painted over the murals.

[RcouF1uZ4gsC]

> We built a giant illegal loft in our room to make it two stories (which we would disassemble for a day every year when the fire inspection happened). We did some stupid and illegal shit, sure. But the sense of community was unparalleled.

Sounds like toxic “bro” culture.

First of all, fire safety regulations are one of those things that are written in blood so speak. Casually bypassing them is not something to be celebrated.

Second, is it any surprise that people who come out of this environment then end up creating startups which skirt regulations, sell out their users privacy, and do “stupid and illegal shit”.