Co-ops

The Oberlin Student Cooperative Association (OSCA) includes three housing and dining co-ops, six dining co-ops, and one program house. We have both room & board and board-only options available on the Oberlin College campus for student members.

The key to OSCA’s success is self-reliance! The fact that student members do our own cooking, cleaning, and operational work builds a much stronger sense of community. OSCA members do everything from making pizza to mopping floors, from buying food to sitting on its Board of Directors. Making an organization the size of OSCA work is a terrific learning opportunity, and a tremendous responsibility. 

We rent our co-op buildings from Oberlin College, but we run them ourselves. Each semester, individual co-ops set all their own internal policies, and each has its own social, culinary, and political character. Except for our employees (Business Coordinator, Financial Manager, Food Safety Advisor, and Office Assistant), Oberlin students handle the massive administrative duties of a corporation—something very few people could ever imagine doing in college! There are many opportunities for individual members to get involved in OSCA, both at the co-op level and at the all-OSCA level, through staff positions that oversee the functioning of OSCA in, between and across our co-ops. 

OSCA has achieved its autonomy because our members work together in pursuit of common goals. Making such an independent community work entails a commitment on your part to participate in the cooperative process of self-governance. What do you think OSCA should be doing? What’s your cooperative vision? OSCA is all about realizing dreams that would be impossible anywhere else, so get involved and make them come true!

You can get acquainted with each of our co-ops by reading their descriptions below!