More information about Middlebury's Weybridge House:

Who we are and what our goals are:

Established over twenty years ago, Weybridge House is the official Environmental Studies academic interest house.

In 1995, Weybridge House residents developed the following mission statement:

“Weybridge Environmental House members have chosen to live and eat in an environment which allows them the freedom and the responsibility to explore and practice ideas of living and integration with the cycles of their natural surroundings. The House provides a cooperative space that fosters the learning, sharing, and the celebration of food, waste, energy, and life.”

While known as the Environmental Studies House, we are much more. Weybridge House seeks to integrate the ideas of and concerns for community and environment into a holistic, every-day living approach to Environmental Studies. As a house, we cook and clean for each other and provide a stimulating, challenging, and fun environment to apply what we learn in the ES Program and other environmental forums to residential life here on campus. Although we are sponsored by the E.S. Department, some of our 17 residents currently are majoring in Dance, Biology, Geography, Architecture, History, English, Religion, and Mathematics. More than the 17 people who live here, we are a community who welcome students, faculty, staff, and guests to participate in out quest to raise questions and apply what we learn in order to foster community and live as sustainably as possible.

Furthermore, we have weekly house meetings and try to bring down speakers to eat and share their ideas so that we may broaden our academic setting and create new ideas for the house. A large emphasis of the house is providing a comfortable, inviting atmosphere to celebrate and support local farming. We do this with nightly dinners, open to the community. We keep a guestbook as a record of the number of people who have visited, and estimate over 300 unique diners this year. We have large (and well-known) Weybridge Feasts several times every semester and actively encourage members of the greater town and college community to celebrate the environment, food, and community with us. Typically 100-200 dinner guests join us for a hearty meal, sometimes featuring music by local bluegrass bands such as Snake Mountain Bluegrass, featuring Middlebury College Teachers Ed Department’s Greg Humphrey.

This semester, we have hosted a guest speaker series, both to bring new ideas to the house, and to create an atmosphere for open dialogue. Connie Bisson, Paul Bortz (of Spirit in Nature), yoga instructor Prem Prakash, local organic beer bottler Morgan Wolaver, Dean Scott Barnicle and his family, Andrea Hamre (with a presentation of her senior thesis work that included interviews with Weybridge residents), and CSO representative Lydia Beaudrot.

How we function:

One of the most unique aspects of the house, which helps foster community, is that we are entirely off the meal plan. The college provides us with an annual $23,900 budget. From this, we make all decisions about where to buy our food, constantly revisiting questions of local vs. organic, and cost vs. quality. We organize dinner preparation on rotation, with each person responsible for two chores (cooking or washing dishes) per week. Everyone also has a specialty job, such as co-op shopping, bread baking, sprout growing, hummus making, or monitoring the compost pile.

One of our goals is to support the local economy by purchasing from as many local producers as possible. We buy coffee from Bud’s Beans, soap from the Vermont Soap Company, apples from Happy Valley Orchard and Champlain Orchards, eggs from Happy Hen Farm, maple syrup from Cabot Hills Maple, cheese from Shelburne Farms, flour from Gleason Grains, lettuce and maple sugar from Sugarworks lettuce and berry farm, honey from Kirk Webster and Champlain Valley Apiaries, and groceries from the Middlebury co-op. We also purchase a share of the Middlebury College Organic Garden each year, providing them with the funds to purchase seeds for planting, and receiving fresh vegetables from harvests in the fall. Over 300 students reap the benefits of our purchases at dinners.

Every spring, we plant a garden, which provides a wonderful opportunity for members of the house to learn about the process of food production and preservation for the year. A few residents from the town also helped work in the garden over the summer, and were thanked with baskets of fresh vegetables.

In an effort to maintain our positive connection with the rest of campus, we also applied for and earned 5 environmental mini-grants to provide clothes drying racks for each commons. Many years, in all seasons, of 17 people’s clothes washing in our house have proved that a clothes dryer is not a necessary utility. We hope that this small contribution to student life will bring a bit more awareness regarding individual choices of energy consumption.

Our kitchen also serves as an open space for all. Several student groups have used our space and cooking supplies throughout the year. Weybridge residents often help prepare food for the College’s Organic Garden dinners. Senior thesis researchers hosted a dinner in our house this past weekend for the Addison county land owners and farmers they interviewed.

In the fall, we also hosted our second Community Friends dinner, inviting every Middlebury College student along with their community friends for a make-your-own pizza dinner, followed by homemade cookies. (approximately 10 additional Middlebury students attended, with 10 children from town)

On May 5th, 2005 we will be hosting a guest speaker panel and bluegrass band The Hibernators in our co-sponsored fundraiser for FEED (Food Education Every Day), which aims to connect local farmers with public schools and improve nutrition education for children. (we anticipate ~200 guests)

The official Web page for the house.

Also applicable, the schools environmental initiatives page.

Good contacts for more information:
Mark Little,
Alyssa Jumars, (Resident Advisor)

More information about the Oberlin Student Cooperative Association:

The Oberlin Student Cooperative Association (OSCA) was established in 1950 and is a network of 9 self-managed student-run housing and dining cooperatives at Oberlin College, serving a total of 630 members. Four of the nine co-ops have a housing component and the houses range in size from approximately 15-64 residents. Each housing co-op also has a dining facility, in which both house members and additional dining-only members eat. There are 5 dining-only co-ops, one of which, Third World, is designed as a safe space for people of color, low-income, first-generation, and international students, and another of which, Kosher-Halal, is designed for people who follow either Jewish or Muslim dietary restrictions. Both Third World and Kosher-Halal require an application; admission to the other co-ops is done by random lottery. Each member of the co-op is expected to put a certain number of hours (generally 4-5) per week towards the organization; jobs include serving on committees, helping to cook a meal, facilitating co-op meetings and making bread or granola (along with a myriad of other jobs). Every member of OSCA is required, as one of their hours for their co-op, to do a cleaning " crew." This policy is one way of maintaining the equality of all OSCA members. Individual co-ops are self-managed, and decisions for the association as a whole are made democratically, with representation from each individual co-op. Most decisions are made by consensus. OSCA buys food from local farmers as much as possible, and special provisions are made for vegan and vegetarian members. OSCA leases most of its facilities from Oberlin College.

OSCA's website

The best way to get in touch with us is by e-mailing .