Crunchy college co-ops?

At the University of Texas in Austin, there's only university housing for 20 percent of students. The rental housing market is insane there. Some students are dealing with the problem by living in co-op housing. It's not simply a matter of seeking more affordable housing. It's for community:

“It’s not just that people are arriving on big, anonymous campuses, but the homes these kids are coming out of are more isolated,” Mr. Jones said. “One of the problems in American society today is that people don’t eat together anymore. It’s the whole bowling alone thing, and co-ops are one of the few places where people can really come together.”

I graduated from college in 1989, so when I started this story, I thought, "Yeah, these co-ops are probably patchouli-reeking hippy havens, especially down in Austin." Newp. Times have changed:

For anyone with a certain idea about the free-ranging spirit of American college life, the taste for bureaucracy and logistics among co-op members can seem staggering. “One of the things that amazed me when I came here,” said Alan Robinson, the general coordinator of College Houses, “was that so many students wanted to impose rules on themselves.”

In addition to a labor czar, each house has various managers and officers, committee and subcommittee delegates, as well as a representative who serves on the board of either College Houses or the Inter-Cooperative Council, the other umbrella organization through which the co-ops here function. In most houses, regular meetings are held to discuss paint colors, parking, guest policy, labor infractions and ways to market co-op life.

[snip]

Members can also decide whether the ornery or impertinent among them should be submitted for review. The choice of one condiment brand or another can prompt impassioned debate. Recently, at Pearl Street, there was much discussion over how to handle students who might use drugs. A few weeks ago one member called the police to report the smell of marijuana in a nearby room.

Such an act would have seemed unimaginable 30 years ago on the premises of Pearl Street, easily the most storied building on campus. Originally constructed as a women’s dormitory in 1961, the house, called Mayfair House then, was home to Farrah Fawcett in her undergraduate years. Later it was reinvented as a co-op known as the Ark, where in the late 60’s and the 70’s beer replaced soda in the vending machines. By the 80’s drug habits were so pervasive in the Ark that it was shut down in 1988 because of “anarchy and building destruction,” as the brochure for College Houses puts it.

French House, the co-op where Mr. Stovall lives, is in many ways emblematic of a new ethos in student communal living, one in which social hedonism, commitment to a vegetarian diet and a monolithic political view no longer hold as the predominant conventions. French House is also known as the carnivore’s house; meat is served every evening. Ten of its 20 residents attend the Hill Country Bible Church nearby every Sunday. Dating within the house is discouraged. “The stereotype is that we are hippies and drug addicts,” said Patrick King, an art student and one of Mr. Stovall’s housemates. “We are neither hippies nor drug addicts.”

This is really great stuff. I hope that by the time Matthew is old enough for college, there'll be a crunchy con co-op at UT. Though he probably won't want anything to do with it. He's not a very crunchy kid. I was over at the doubleplus uncrunchy Virginia Postrel's place not long ago, and told her that my kid keeps going on and on about modernism, and modernist design, and how he wants to go to IKEA to look at the cool design, and how Jackson Pollock is his favorite artist and Frank Gehry is his favorite architect, and so forth. She good-naturedly cackled at my comeuppance. Who wouldn't?