<p>@Milkweed - All excellent questions! I will try go line by line and answer everything. I also want to direct you to a blog post I wrote about [choosing</a> to be in OSCA as a first year](<a href=“http://blogs.oberlin.edu/living/housing/living_in_the_harkland.shtml]choosing”>http://blogs.oberlin.edu/living/housing/living_in_the_harkland.shtml). Just for background, I was in OSCA for my whole time at Oberlin, in Harkness from my first day through midway through my seventh semester, and was in Brown Bag Co-op (a co-op for students with houses with kitchens that allows them to buy bulk ingredients and cook at home) from that point til I graduated.</p>
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<li>My son will be a freshman and is considering the coop dining only option. He has grown up eating mainly vegetarian food.</li>
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<p>Firstly, he will feel very comfortable in OSCA. Every co-op cooks vegetarian options for every meal, if not fully vegetarian for all meals.</p>
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<li>Do many freshman eat in a coop and live in a freshman dorm? How does this work socially? </li>
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<p>There are 100 slots in OSCA reserved for first years, which actually makes getting into OSCA your first year easier than any other year. OSCA for upperclassmen is a random lottery of everyone who signs up, which is far more than the pool of around 700 of the incoming class. Out of that 100 slots, there are first-years who choose Harkness, Tank, or Keep, which are housing and dining co-ops (probably around 30-40? I’m not sure on the numbers). For your first year only, if you choose to dine in these three co-ops, you must also live there. In the future, you can choose to eat in these three co-ops without living there, but if you choose to live there, you must eat there.</p>
<p>Even if you do not end up in a co-op over the summer, there is a high chance you will end up in at least one co-op over the course of the first few weeks of the semester. My brother got off the waitlist into Old B two weeks into the semester, and stayed there the whole time, and is back for more next year.</p>
<p>Overall, if your son chooses to eat in a co-op, there is no guarantee that he will be in specific dormitory as well, so he may end up in first-year experience, a program house, or in traditional four-year housing. Regardless of where he lives and where he eats, he will be a part of a community in both places. You bond a great deal over meals.</p>
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<li>Are the different coops known for different kinds of foods?</li>
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<p>Yes and no. Each semester, there is a discussion on food policy, basically, what a co-op will agree upon to eat for the whole semester. Traditionally, Harkness is a vegetarian co-op that serves vegan options at every meal, Fairchild (lovingly known as Fairkid) serves vegan food with vegetarian options and also has some restrictions on what types of sugars/sweeteners they use. Other than that, all the co-ops tend to cook vegetarian with vegan options almost all the time, with meat cooked occasionally, and always with advanced notice. Cooking and eating vegetarian is a cheaper option, and also pleases the most folks at once, so it predominates our dining experience.</p>
<p>If you’re starting to get to the nitty-gritty of what co-ops serve, Old B is known for having two elected ice cream makers, Harkness is known for its awesome pizza night, and Fairkid is great at granola. This is legend above everything else (except for the Old B ice cream, that’s been around forever) and cooks come and go, so, take that statement with a grain of salt.</p>
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<li>Are the coops centrally located? He may have only a short time to get lunch between classes.</li>
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<p>Harkness, Fairkid, Kosher Halal, and Third World are all located in the middle of campus. Keep and Pyle Inn are on north campus, Old B is south of campus and Tank is east of campus. Even the far away co-ops will serve meals in a timely manner so that students can get back to campus to classes on time, both lunch and dinner (there are some 7pm classes here, too, not just 1:30pm classes after lunch). The only thing to consider is that after meals, there are cleaning shifts, and everyone is OSCA is required to clean up after at least one meal a week (this is called crew. It is a tenant that OSCA is built upon; even the president of OSCA does a crew. It is a great equalizer, and super fun). If you have a class following a meal, you just won’t sign up for a cleaning shift then. 10 minutes, even in the snow, is enough time to get from your co-op to your classes.</p>
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<li>I saw a time for lunch and dinner. When is breakfast served? or is it self serve?</li>
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<p>Most co-ops will have workchart positions for breakfast cooks for weekdays, which means that there may be a hot breakfast option for most meals. Even if there isn’t an official breakfast cook position, there is usually granola, yogurt, bread, and honey puffed grains to take on your own. If you’re really into breakfast, you can sign up for a breakfast cooking position and your co-op will adore you if you made pancakes, oatmeal, or scrambles. </p>
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<li>In exchange for their labor, OSCA members get three meals a day, 24-hour access to a fully stocked industrial kitchen, and a board bill that is about 50 percent cheaper than campus dinings. What does this 24 hour access mean? </li>
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<p>24 hour access means that the kitchen is open all the time. If you’re hungry at 2am, you can go into your co-op, use ingredients and the cooking spaces and utensils to make yourself food, and then clean up after yourself. It’s the main reason why OSCA worked so well for me. If I missed a meal time, there were always ingredients around for me to make myself something to eat. It was awesome.</p>
<p>To note: you will have the <em>option</em> of three meals a day. There are scheduled meals twice a day during the week and on weekends (we do brunch and dinner during the weekends), and almost always an option for breakfast, either prepared on your own or picked up in the co-op or prepared by someone else.</p>
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<li>What if you miss your meal, can you eat at another dining hall?</li>
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<p>If you know you will miss a meal time (either ahead of time, or a constant thing) you may ask for a cook to make you a saved plate, which will be set aside for pickup later. If you do end up missing a meal, there will be ingredients available to make yourself food. If you end up visiting friends on another part of campus during your meal time, you can visit another co-op (I’ll explain more in the guest policy below) and eat there. OSCA is very flexible.</p>
<p>You receive one meal in campus dining per week as part of your OSCA plan. You can use that meal whenever you’d like in Stevenson or Lord-Saunders, but you only get one per week. Harkness has tofu-making in the kitchen on Sunday nights, so I tended to use my meal then, but you could choose to use it whenever you’d like.</p>
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<li>If he has a guest, do they pay? how much?</li>
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<p>I’m going to explain guest policy here, since it applies to this question. Each semester, a co-op will decide on its guest policy. Many co-ops ask that guests be “invited” by a member of that co-op (nothing formal, but a sort of internal check-and-balance). This somewhat assures that a meal will not be flooded by tons of unknown people that won’t respect the rules or the space. Every guest (co-oper or not) will be asked to help clean up after a meal for every three meals eaten there.</p>
<p>In short, you don’t pay dollars, but you will be in the form of labor. Visiting other co-ops is totally part of the OSCA experience. My best friend cooked in Pyle Inn for a year, and I always went and helped her during her last hour of cooking and then ate the delicious food. On the weekends, the normal scheduled workchart changes to a “special meal” workchart, which usually is in place for Saturday dinner and Sunday brunch. You sign up for one special meal and one special meal crew each semester, and along with your fellow cooks, make a whole meal for the co-op. Meals are usually themed, ranging from a certain type of cuisine or some sort of designated thing. I cooked Thai and Japanese special meals, a St. Patrick’s Day special meal and a diner special meal. Memorable meals I attended were the Musical special meal (all the food was brought out in song, and dishes were based on the musicals/songs they were singing), the wedding special meal (there was a faux wedding, and lots of cake), the P special meal (everything served started with the letter P), the spuds meal (an entirely potato meal), and the Black River Brunch special meal (a sit down meal based on the brunch menu of a local restaurant).</p>
<p>Whew! What a lot of answers. I hope this helps!</p>