What is An Alternative Lifestyle?

There’s never enough silverware.
It’s dinnertime at Columbae, and the students have come together to sling tofu, ladle rice and drizzle fondue onto plates, Tupperware lids and a rapidly degenerating succession of flat, food-holding items. But it’s not the cutlery that matters at Columbae–it’s the community.
“Because Columbae is so cramped and we do so much together, we all get really close,” said Rebecca Hsu ‘10. “In dorms you don’t need to interact if you don’t want to, but living in Columbae compels you to do so.”
Even with the intensive community life of a co-op, some students choose to carve out an even more intimately shared space within University controlled housing. This quarter, 18 Columbae residents have banded together to create two “commune rooms,” pooling their spatial resources to create a set-up that most students would never consider. In each commune group, people living in three rooms throughout the house have decided to designate one of their rooms as a study room, one as a socializing room and one as a sleeping room–with eight people in one sleeping room and 10 in another.
“Living with people is one of the best ways to get to know them,” said Hsu, who in her first year in a co-op, has lived in one Columbae commune fall quarter and another this quarter. “It was a really creative quarter. I was taking fiction writing, and three other people were also taking it; so we could bounce stories off one another. Everyone was into music, so we’d occasionally have jam sessions in our room.”
Of course, having so many people inhabit one room comes at a cost.
“We pretty much lived in perpetual mess,” Hsu laughed.
Plus, with nine roommates, extra-communal relations can get a little more complicated–the simple act of sexiling could take on the form of a hallway stampede. To protect that basic human right, in a house where most doors are perpetually propped open, one room–denoted by a paper sign on the door, the “Library” –remains locked.
“It’s a room unofficially designated for, well, sex,” Hsu said.
As unconventional as these living arrangements may seem to the greater campus, some people are taking things a step further. Students from Columbae, Synergy and Chi Theta Chi are forming an off-campus community that will provide students the chance to eat local, organic food, perform all household tasks on their own and, they say, grow together as a family.
“Dorms for me are just sterile–it’s like they want every place to be the same,” said Julia Sebastian ‘11. “Stanford is a place where they hold your hand, and there are a lot of kids who have no idea how to live on their own [as they do at] almost all other colleges across the country. It’s cool to live a different lifestyle that’s not so babied.”
Sebastion, along with 17 Stanford undergraduate and graduate students, will rent out two of Palo Alto’s Dead Houses–a collection of 10 houses commissioned by local Deadhead Rob Levitsky in 1982. Each Dead House is named for a different Grateful Dead song, and rent is priced below market costs to help out students. The Stanford group will most likely take over “Uncle John’s Band” and “St. Steven’s.”
By living on their own outside of University authority, the commune members hope to take greater control of their space in a more intimate setting than what they have found on campus.
“The co-ops on campus are a crash course in communal living,” said Sebastian, who currently lives in Synergy. “The co-ops on campus are beautiful places and great for learning and all that, but they’re also like 50 people. That’s the reason I think this is the next step: [our commune will be] much more intimate.”
The commune’s plan is strong, and its membership has grown from 10 to 18. Several other communes currently lurk beyond Stanford’s manicured lawns and shapely palm trees, including Magic, a vegan community founded in 1972 by Stanford and Yale graduates. Sebastian’s community, currently going by the name Community Now, will differ in that it will be largely populated by undergraduates.
“I didn’t really have a strong sense that I wanted to become part of a consensual community next year,” said Reed Matheny ’10, a Chi Theta Chi resident. “But their project just seemed so sensible, so right and so fun that I had to get involved.”
The group has made a strong effort to bond already this year, so by the time they all move in together and depend on each other for edible food and clean bathrooms, the links of trust and accountability will be firm.
“You can’t split everything evenly between all people at all times,” said Matheny, commenting on the division of labor that he has observed at Chi Theta Chi. “It can seem unjust… This will be much less of a problem next year since we all know each other and we’ve all come into this very devoted to living together.”
By dedicating intensive time and energy to the planning of the commune, the 18 members believe that they are creating something that will last long after they leave the area. They hope to avoid falling into a governing hierarchy and plan to shape their space according to their needs. And they’re not above dumpster-diving to support their organic habits.
This lifestyle, radically different from a daily schedule of shuffling from a Stern one-room double to the dining hall, is one many Stanford students have never experienced. And it’s certainly not for everyone.
“You need mental preparation to live in a commune,” Matheny advised. “If you go into it not realizing what’s required, or not knowing the people in the house…you might learn something, but you’ll be unhappy.”