This Winter Term, the Oberlin Student Cooperative Association’s Harkness House is hosting a special-interest Luddite Co-op, where all organizing will be done on pen and paper, and all common spaces will be — for the most part — free of modern technology.
The idea originally stemmed from Harkness resident, OSCA Accessibility Coordinator, and College third-year Ozzie Frazier in the fall of 2024, after examining Harkness’ archives from the early 1980s alongside the elected Harkness Historians during the process of reviving an old OSCA publication, The Mill (now The Dish). Frazier considered how different it must have been to run the co-op with much less technology than we have widespread access to today. According to OSCA’s Membership Secretary and College third-year Theo Sloan, the operation of any OSCA co-op relies heavily on technology; on the average day, members receive around 20 emails pertaining to assorted responsibilities, from work shifts and meal menus to more frivolous topics such as sledding propositions or Halloween costumes.
“I think there’s a hunger to understand how it used to be, because there’s so much about the past of OSCA that we don’t know,” Frazier said. “I do think that understanding how we used to operate is important to understanding how we will continue to operate in the future.”
Frazier’s curiosity led to more serious discussions about what a modern technology-free OSCA Winter Term would look like, as they began collaborating with fellow Harkness members Sloan and College third-year Neptune Rasnic Olson. The idea of operating a co-op without the use of email, Google Spreadsheets, or Google Docs poses some challenges in adapting, according to Sloan.
However, many future members are hopeful and excited.
“I am interested in being less phone-dependent,” future Luddite Co-op member and College second-year Sky Henehan said. “I already somewhat recently deleted all my social media. I’m really excited to learn how we can manage such a large group of people, especially without email. OSCA is so incredibly dependent on email, typically.”
Sloan and Rasnic Olson co-authored the proposal, which was then presented to OSCA Chair and College fourth-year Eric McKewin during one of OSCA’s General Management Team meetings. When it was first proposed, they had 19 confirmed members, all of whom resided in Harkness, and needed a total of 30 in the next two weeks in order to successfully operate. Word spread quickly, first among Harkness’ current residents and other co-ops, then to others outside of OSCA, including members of Oberlin’s Luddite Club, which has no direct affiliation with the Winter Term co-op. In the days after the submission of the proposal, there was an overwhelming amount of interest, with over 90 people indicating Luddite Co-op as their first choice for Winter Term. As a result, the capacity was raised from 65 to 100 members.
“I’m in my seventh semester at OSCA now, [and] I don’t think I’ve ever seen a Winter Term co-op at this capacity,” OSCA President and College fourth-year Eloise Rich said.
Because OSCA relies heavily on the use of email to maintain communication between members, Sloan and Rasnic Olson have made sure through their proposal that communication will not waver. Instead of using Google Forms and Google Spreadsheets to collect and organize work shift information, there will be physical forms for members to fill out, and the designated officer will compile each response into a work chart. There will be a bulletin board, where members are free to post any announcements that would otherwise be sent via email, and these announcements will also be shared during meal times. Organizers said this puts emphasis on the importance of community and speaking to one another face to face, as word of mouth will also become an important mode of communication.
“We want to run it like any other co-op, which means that Neptune and I will probably spend the first few days facilitating discussions about different aspects of how we want to run things and facilitating elections of people into the usual co-op positions that we have,” Sloan said.
Beyond the technical operation of the co-op, there has been talk of a few exceptions to the Luddite lifestyle, including Wii hours in the lounge and a CD player in the kitchen to accompany the physical cookbooks. Other considerations are also being made to accommodate a need to use devices for Winter Term projects, such as computer hour in the AJLC in which members can bring them there together and maintain community while not letting the Luddite spirit get in the way of productivity.
