On Thursday, the Oberlin Student Cooperative Association leadership met with representatives of the College to start discussions for a renewed lease agreement. The last rent contract, which was negotiated in 2021 and expires in August, brought about a slew of changes that many argue significantly handicapped OSCA. The new contract is being negotiated by OSCA President Eloise Rich and the OSCA–Oberlin College Liaison Elijah Morton, both College fourth-years, who are presenting a series of demands to the College. 

Some of the more substantial requests include providing OSCA with more housing facilities, reducing the rent overall, and granting OSCA students some meal swipes. Before the 2021 contract, OSCA students used to be granted one meal swipe a week in recognition of the fact that students on the College’s meal plan eat occasionally in co-ops.

Morton and Rich emphasized that one of the changes they are most hoping to see implemented concerns the ability of students to transfer into OSCA from campus dining. Currently, students have until the end of the Add/Drop period to join OSCA. Afterward, mobility between OSCA and the College is limited to one direction: students may leave OSCA for College dining and housing, but not vice versa.

They have also presented a slew of smaller requests. This includes broadening what OSCAns can store in OSCA housing over the summer, requesting that the College offer OSCA marketing services at no additional cost, granting OSCA the ability to host prospective students overnight, and amending their relationship with Campus Safety so that students may request their assistance while in OSCA buildings. Currently, Campus Safety is not allowed to enter buildings unless under “risk of a loss of human life,” according to current phrasing in the contract.

While OSCA operates as an independent, student-run organization, it rents its spaces from the College and has to purchase dining and housing exemptions from the College for its students. Currently, students in OSCA pay $4,780 for housing and $3,528 for dining each semester — once members receive the co-op credit for completing labor — as opposed to $4,985 for College housing and $5,063 for College dining each semester. These numbers fluctuate year to year based on the College’s housing and dining prices. 

On Thursday, Rich and Morton presented the proposed amended lease agreement to Assistant General Counsel Liam McMillin and Assistant Vice President and Dean of Residence Life and Auxiliary Services Mark Zeno. More meetings will follow before the end of the semester. 

Rich said no details of the meeting could be shared yet, considering the lease is not finalized.

Both parties expressed goodwill and enthusiasm coming out of yesterday’s meeting. Although Zeno did not disclose any particular issues under discussion, he indicated to the Review that he did not foresee any larger changes happening.

“I believe Oberlin and OSCA have a great relationship, and we continue to improve ways to help both entities collaborate and grow,” Zeno wrote in an email to the Review. “I don’t anticipate there being any significant changes, but see some great opportunity for both of us to partner close[ly] as we vet the contract.”

Rich similarly felt that OSCA and the College had an understanding. 

“I left the meeting with no sense of surprise, which is good,” Rich said. “The general sentiment I have is that this is a good working relationship, and I’m very appreciative that the College has been equally thoughtful through this process.

The College-OSCA relationship has been a matter of contention since the last rent contract was negotiated, which introduced a new rent model and transferred Fairchild House dining facilities from OSCA to the College. As a result of the contract, OSCA’s dining prices increased by 25 percent, single-room housing increased by 33 percent, and double-room housing by 65 percent.

Rich attributed these 2021 changes to the College’s model of revenue neutrality, which was introduced the same year. The 2019 One Oberlin Report claimed that the College lost $1.9 million a year in profits to OSCA, writing that OSCA students “represent both lost revenue and additional facilities, capital and operating costs to the College.”

Since then, however, Rich said that relations between the two institutions have largely improved. According to Rich, in 2022, OSCA’s Oberlin College Liaison became a yearly position, rather than a position only in contract years, in order to improve relations. In 2024, OSCA and the College formalized an amendment to a Memorandum of Understanding introducing a co-op credit system, so that Oberlin students who join OSCA no longer lose financial aid. This marked a significant step both in making OSCA more accessible and in building a positive and open relationship between OSCA and the College.

A large part of the contract discussions include simply incorporating this and other MOUs made in the past four years into an official part of the lease. 

“There’s been so much change, particularly in the rhetoric surrounding our relationship to Oberlin College,” Rich said. “There are definitely still those [in OSCA] who view Oberlin as this antagonistic body that wants to … ruin their quality of life, and ruin their free spirit, and muddy the waters of the rhetoric you hear of what Oberlin is supposed to stand for. But we, I, don’t have that. We understand this as a business deal at its core.”

Both Morton and Rich emphasized the importance and cultural value of OSCA for Oberlin.

“I genuinely cannot fathom what my Oberlin experience would’ve been like without OSCA,” Rich said. “Beyond giving me all of my friends and all of my food for four years, it has also given me the most phenomenal work experience.”

Morton spoke to the larger significance of OSCA today.

“On a really wide scale, the reason that the College is in a rough spot is just because the political pendulum is swinging to the right,” Morton said. “For now, things are consolidating. There are fewer third spaces, there’s less community. And, with OSCA being the largest student-run cooperative in the country, … we can be one of those spaces that sticks around and is a beacon for this.”

They both expressed hope that the rest of the discussions would go smoothly, and that OSCA would continue to grow and to foster a good working relationship with the College in the years to come.