Stanford’s seven co-op houses kicked off spring quarter with “Co-op Week,” a series of social events and open-houses encouraging students to pre-assign to co-ops for the 2025-26 school year. Highlights of the programming included the annual co-op dinner and co-op crawl.
Co-ops are a collection of individual houses scattered along the row, unique for its cooperative operation and management of the house, which involves residents in tasks such as cooking dinner, cleaning common spaces and overseeing the allocation of budget for shopping and dorm events. Stanford’s co-ops include 576 Alvarado (576), Columbae, Enchanted Broccoli Forest (EBF), Hammarskjöld (Hamm), Kairos, Synergy and Terra. The co-ops, each home to 30-60 residents, have been working extensively to host events to strengthen their community and attract newcomers.
“Covid was really devastating to generational knowledge about co-op living and culture,” Kairos resident assistant (RA) Emma Charity ’25 wrote in an email to The Daily. “We wanted this crawl [and other events] to reinstate co-ops into the broader campus consciousness.”
Houses have set up a co-op council with one representative from each house to strengthen their community and attract newcomers.
“[The creation of the council] has allowed us to work between co-op houses to plan programming like crawl,” wrote Charity.
The first program of the week, a co-op mixer at On Call Cafe, allowed students to meet RAs and current residents over coffee.
“Current co-op members were extremely excited to share why they loved their community,” wrote Naomie Chien ’28, a mixer attendee and a prospective resident. “The chats were informal and helped me accurately gauge the underlying cultures of each co-op.”
“[The mixer] really emphasized how the community is strong,” said John Michael Pfrommer ’28, another prospective applicant.
Co-op are distinguished by unique themes and identities that set them apart. “Historically, co-ops have also been places for political action,” Hamm RA Mandla Msipa ’26 said.
Hamm was founded to respond to the need for “international understanding.” Columbae and Synergy were founded for similar reasons, in protest against the Vietnam War and to seek an alternative lifestyle, respectively.
The all co-op dinner welcomed prospective residents prepared by all the houses on Wednesday, April 2, on 576’s front lawn.
Co-op crawl took place the following day, consisting of a roaming party and house tour of every co-op. The event ended with an after-party at EBF featuring DJs from every house.
“Stanford can feel like a simulation sometimes,” wrote Charity. “Kairos is real, we cook and clean and add quirks to the house around us.” On average, students spend two to six hours a week on various tasks for the house, according to R&DE.
After going back-and-forth on pre-assignment, Pfrommer eventually chose to pre-assign to 576.
“It was a combo of the house was very pretty, and at all three events, the 576 people were very energetic and felt tight,” Pfrommer said.
Chien was initially hesitant to pre-assign but ultimately felt drawn to “the tight community … [and] the delicious international-themed food” in addition to its location and cleanliness.
Msipa hopes that these events will set co-ops on “strong footing” to grow and strengthen its community in the coming years.
However, there’s still progress to be made. Joe Ho ’28, a programming attendee decided against pre-assigning. “I’m not pre-assigning this year because I want one more year of dorm experience as a sophomore,” wrote Ho.