Residents of the Synergy+Terra cooperative house (co-op) were notified today that the house will be self-operated in the coming academic year. During the pre-assignment process, only 14 of the 50 beds in 550 San Juan were filled, which fell below the 50% threshold required by Residential Education (ResEd).
“We determined that that [percentage] just isn’t sustainable. Co-ops require a lot of, as the name suggests, cooperation in terms of the cooking, the managing of the house, the cleaning responsibilities,” said Vice Provost for Student Affairs Michele Rasmussen. “We just did not think there was any path forward for this house to be sustainable as a co-op.”
Students were able to rank more than one co-op this year in response to student feedback and to ensure that the co-ops can operate properly.
Cooperative living “is created through a shared responsibility and a shared labor over each other’s survival — care that you put in to your housemates’ health, your housemates’ cleanliness of their living space is really something that is unmatched anywhere else on campus,” said Eva Jones ’25 M.A. ’26, a past Resident Assistant (RA) and Synergy. Jones is also a representative on the Co-op Continuity Council, a group of students and alumni advocating to preserve co-op living on campus.
Synergy is a co-op focused on alternative living, while Terra is the unofficial queer and trans themed house. This year’s change in housing status follows past attempts to convert Synergy and Terra to self-ops. The Committee on Residential Learning (CoRL) made the decision last year to combine Synergy and Terra based on previous challenges to fill the houses.
“A large part of the programming within a co-op is the cooking, and so that will not be an option in this house, so that will have an impact,” said senior director of student housing assignments Justin Akers.
Students who did pre-assign into Synergy+Terra can either choose to stay in the self-op version of the house or re-enter the housing assignment process. Starting on Tuesday, as part of the regular housing draw, the remaining beds in Synergy+Terra will be open for students to fill.
“We know it’s disappointing news for the students who did pre-assign into [Synergy+Terra] fully anticipating it would be a co-op,” Rasmussen said. “We want to support [residents] in thinking about ways in which [co-op status] can potentially be restored.”
According to Jones, “every co-op has its highs and lows,” and Columbae, another co-op, experienced a spike in pre-assignment applications this year. She emphasized that “cooperative houses need a way to navigate these moments of change in their houses” without completely losing their co-op status.
Jones was critical of what she described as minimal communication from ResEd regarding changes to this year’s preassignment process, expressing hope that the co-op status could ultimately be preserved.
Rasmussen denied claims of insufficient communication, saying she and the ResEd team hoped to work with Synergy+Terra and other co-op members to help the house regain its status when feasible for operation.
“We need more places where students can be attendant to each other’s needs and responsible for not just themselves, but each other,” said Jones.
This article was corrected to reflect the timeline of changes to the pre-assignment process.