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ON A BRIGHT, INDIAN SUMMER AFTERNOON in Berkeley, Calfiornia, I pass a sign surrounded by blue and gold helium balloons,"Welcome Co-op Alums!" and enter a wood-shingled building almost a block long. The University Students Cooperative Association (USCA) is throwing a brunch and reception for visiting alumni here at Cloyne Court, a 151-student coop, the largest of the USCA's 20 co-op properties.
Since the USCA Alumni Association incorporated four years ago, it has amassed almost 1,000 enthusiastic members. This devotion, especially among earlier members, is easily understood. Without the co-ops, the students would have had to compete for scarce affordable housing in this housing-tight college town. "Why can't conditions be improved for hundreds of students like yourselves by throwing your resources together? Living together! Working together!" asked impassioned university YMCA director Harry Kingman during the Great Depression. Fourteen students did just that, founding the first USCA student house in 1933.
Now, 67 years later, the USCA has grown into the largest student cooperative in North America, boasting a membership of almost 1,300 students and 20 different co-op residences, drawn from post-secondary school students attending accredited schools all over the Bay Area. Its incredible size alone makes the USCA an anomaly among student co-ops. This student-owned, student-run organization operates on an annual budget of $5 million and employs 20 full-time staff people as its central administrative core.
Almost nothing about the Berkeley student co-ops is "typical." For example, while retaining the basic Rochdale Co-op principle of "one member, one vote," the USCA is structured as a representative democracy. Each house elects one representative to the organization's Board of Directors for every 70 members (or a fraction thereof). Attending bimonthly meetings...