Assistant vice provost for Residential Education (ResEd) Cheryl Brown informed co-ops Synergy and Terra that both houses would be “sunsetted” and lose their co-op status in a staff meeting with ResEd on Tuesday. 

Pre-assignment numbers for the upcoming academic year have been low across all co-ops. After pre-assignment, Synergy and Enchanted Broccoli Forest (EBF) resident assistants (RAs) for next year met with Rowan Neighborhood Program Director Andrew Gray to request a second round of pre-assignment, which was denied.

Gray allegedly alerted Synergy, a co-op founded in 1972 focused on alternative living, and Synergy and Terra, an unofficial queer and trans-themed co-op founded in 1970, that they may be turned into self-ops due to the low numbers. Synergy then shared this information with Terra.

“As part of Stanford’s co-op tradition, theme houses are expected to maintain a healthy pre-assignment roster filling between 50% and 100% of their assigned spaces with students committed to fulfilling the theme duties of cooking and cleaning without assistance. Falling below this range results in the loss of theme housing privileges,” vice provost for student affairs Michele Rasmussen wrote in the email to Synergy at 4 p.m. on May 6.

Co-ops are community based row houses where each resident has cooking and cleaning responsibilities. To live in a co-op, residents can pre-assign through an application. The remaining spots in the house are open for students to choose in the regular housing selection process. As future self-ops, Synergy and Terra would have those operations taken care of by the University and be part of the regular housing selection process.

“Co-ops at Stanford have always been, and will remain, a beloved and valued part of residential life. However, it is our responsibility to steward Stanford residential spaces as effectively and fairly as possible,” ResEd spokesperson Luisa Rapport wrote in a statement to The Daily. She said the University remains “committed” to supporting pre-assignees to these houses. 

On April 25, ResEd presented Synergy and Terra staff with three options for the houses: turn both houses into self-ops, keep both houses as semi self-ops (which involves accepting dining or custodial staff and increasing costs to residents) or consolidate both houses into one. Synergy and Terra staff chose the second option and decided to try to negotiate for certain modifications. They then informed ResEd of this decision. 

Synergy created a letter of support for students, faculty and alumni to sign, noting that co-ops serve an important space of historically marginalized communities and attributed low pre-assignment numbers to housing application barriers. 

The letter currently has 809 signatures. Synergy also sent out a Google Form for students to indicate commitment to choosing the house during the regular housing draw. Synergy staff delivered the letter, which had over 600 signatures at the time, on April 29 to ResEd. The houses also communicated to ResEd that they were willing to keep discussing their options.

In the announcement on May 6, Synergy and Terra were told that no negotiation was to take place, leaving some residents feeling blindsided. 

“Both houses know what’s going on, our RAs are letting us know. And then all of a sudden, our houses are getting shut down, which is not what we were led to believe this entire time until [May 6],” Sofia Gonzalez-Rodriguez ’25, a Synergy resident and former Synergy staff, said. 

Now, both houses are deciding how to move forward and plan to appeal the decision with ResEd. Vardaan Shah ’25, a Terra resident and former Terra RA, has hope that ResEd can be negotiated with. “It’s not like these situations are permanent,” he said, referring to Columbae, which lost their co-op status and regained it last year. 

Shah said the houses are unsure who is making the decisions and there has been a lack of transparency.

“It felt kind of hurtful, kind of disrespectful to our future staff, who had been putting in this time to meet with them,” Gonzalez-Rodriguez said.

Sydney Faux ’26, a Terra resident, was “devastated” when she heard the news, especially after all the negotiation and hope to salvage the houses. She says it is hard to hear that such a supportive community is being shut down for reasons that are unclear to her. 

“Terra has been the first place that I can truly call home,” Faux said. “Terra really is the only place where I feel like I can truly express myself, whether it’s through queerness or any other sort of avenue.”

Shah said Terra is especially important for queer people, as it provides them with a safe space and an accepting family, something even more important now. For transitioning students, other Terra residents can provide advice and help them express themselves through giving them haircuts and free clothes that allow them to express their gender identity. 

“I think it’s really devastating to me, honestly, that the University didn’t even take the time to understand what the ramifications of that decision was going to be before, before making it,” Shah said. “And it’s really devastating that the people who are going to be most impacted by this decision are people who are already marginalized.”

“Friends come in here and they do leave like family,” Terra resident Gio Jiang ’26 told The Daily.   

Shah shared that Terra residents have told him that they would have dropped out, transferred or done harm to themselves had it not been for Terra. 

Aarushi Patil ’24 M.S. ’25 finds the Terra community much more supportive than a standard dorm or self-op. “It’s hard to experience that loss of community … I think a lot of us didn’t find community outside of this,” Patil said.

Despite its theme, Terra is home to not only gender queer or LGBTQ+ people. Gonzalez-Rodriguez said the decision will also affect friends of the house, people who attend the houses’ events and alumni. 

Faux said co-ops are so powerful and special — something the University does not understand. Metrics to determine the future of these houses are “arbitrarily set,” Faux said.

“There must be something that’s so, so special and so unique and so powerful about these places, such that people are begging the University, ‘I want to keep cleaning Aarushi’s toilets, I want to keep cooking for my friends,’” Jiang said.

This article has been updated to include comment from RedEd.