Washington University Cooperative

Dear CoOperators,

Since Labor Day 2004 I have sent my "gratuitous faculty advice" to the students of the WashU Coop. http://www.washucoop.com/node/374

Here is some more:

I exhort you co-op students to take the plunge and declare independence of quadrangle housing, but only after having incorporated as a real housing management cooperative, as we should have done long ago. This will take some time. In the meantime, we must look to our constant patrons in the university and especially to the historic preservationists in our neighborhood. We are all natural allies.

We don't have to buy the buildings. I think the "Perry" and 6015 ought to be owned by the University, even if managed autonomously, so we will continue to be the "WashU Coop," their flagship experiment. New buildings would be owned by the co-op network, not exclusive to WashU, or by third parties who take the initiative to establish co-op houses. The Webster students' nascent Student Housing Initiative Project would be part of this loose decentralized network.

If I were still paid and had money, I would have invested in this network, including a co-op bookstore and grocery, as everyone must know very well, because I have always said so, and I always do what I say, if I have the resources. I renew that promise, made many times before in formal and informal communications.

This note is a reiteration of our basic plan, under discussion for years and not forgotten, though we may need to remind ourselves from time to time, and recapture our vision.

Please see the NASCO (North American Students of Cooperation) Organizer's Handbook, and the website of the National Cooperative Business Association. Incorporation as a housing management cooperative is the plan recommended by the NASCO people who talked to us in Autumn 03 when were first getting organized, and again in Summer 06, when they visited first the Coop Library (in my privately owned Cervantes Co-op House) and then attended a summer pot luck across the street at the Perry, packed with excited students whose reggae concert for neighborhood youth the day before had been a triumphal success. Shortly after this visit I received an offer of $50,000 from NASCO for a down payment on a new cooperative house in St Louis. Unfortunately the students dropped the ball on this and I had my own problems to deal with, as you know.

I hope and trust that this situation is turning around and the worst is over, thanks to your moral and material support, your friendship and solidarity.

This is my gratuitous faculty advice, offered entirely at my own initiative. You may take it or leave it, as always.

--Jerome Bauer
Community Lecturer
WashU Co-op Co-Founder (Syndicate of Initiative)

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Students rally to save professor's co-op house, KSDK Channel 5 News coverage of the St Louis Activist Hub and WashU Coop Benefit to Save Cervantes Free University: http://origin.ksdk.com/news/local/story.aspx?storyid=194877&catid=3%20

North American Students of Cooperation: www.nasco.coop

NASCO Organizer's Handbook: http://nasco.coop/resources/files/Organizer's%20handbook%20text.pdf

National Cooperative Business Association: http://www.ncba.coop/serv_pubp_test_senate.cfm?

Federation of Egalitarian Communities: http://thefec.org/

Rochdale Principle of Cooperation (What is a co-op?): http://michaelbluejay.com/coop/rochdale-principles.html

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Question for discussion: Are we a co-op, really?