Minutes
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Older Minutes
Fall 2006
- Documents/Meeting 24 September 2006
- Documents/Meeting 9 October 2006
- Documents/Meeting 22 October 2006
Spring 2006
- Documents/Meeting 12 February 2006
- Documents/Meeting 27 February 2006
- Documents/Meeting 6 March 2006
- Documents/Meeting 14 March 2006
- Documents/Meeting 10 April 2006
- Documents/Meeting 25 April 2006
- Documents/Meeting 16 May 2006
And finally, the welcome letter from the tutors circa fall 2008:
Fall '08 Coop is about to begin. Welcome!
For the love of all that's good, please read this email. KEYS: When you show up, you’ll get a front door key from either Melissa or I. We’ll also give you a room key. Don’t lose these keys. You’ll be charged $25 per replacement. Also, these keys may not be loaned out. We recommend locking the door to your room. (See below under SECURITY.) Our numbers: Allison, 617-850-2028; Melissa’s #: 714-209-3136. I’m on the 3rd floor of 3-Sac (the first door on your right as you come up the last set of stairs, sign on the door says: “Tutor suite, do not enter”. Melissa’s on the first floor of ’05, room
- 2.
WHERE WILL I BE SLEEPING? Melissa and I will find rooms for you to SQUAT in. Unless you are participating in unofficial room draw, please refrain from moving in your grand piano. The room you’ll be squatting in is, in all likelihood, a room that someone else will be moving into after official room draw, and there may even be some switching before room draw. Please store all your big stuff in the basement, just make sure not to block pathways as returning coopers will be retrieving their stuff from storage. The basements are easy to locate—just find the door with the stairs going down.
WHY DO I HAVE TO WAIT SO LONG TO GET MY ROOM FOR THE SEMESTER? Friday(9/12) is the first day that we can expect everyone to be here. Sorry. MANDATORY CLEANUP AND MEETING Sunday September 14th. We may start as early as 6 or 7 am and we can getout as late as 10 pm. You’re all expected to be there for the entire day. No surreptitious naps, please. Again, please don’t make plans that will require your early departure from the meeting. We know that this can be a huge inconvenience for many of you, requiring you to juggle other important commitments. But this is really the only absolutely mandatory event we have throughout the entire semester. Tutors don’t take any pleasure in making this demand on you and we can’t stress enough how important your presence is that day *for the coop*, not to mention that your absence is extremely unfair to everyone else who is here the entire day.
ROOM DRAW: For those of you who haven’t already secured a room via unofficial roomdraw, room draw will be at 5pm sharp, Friday September 12th. Your attendance is mandatory and we won’t wait around for you to start. If you’re not there, tutors will pick a room for you.
EMERGENCY MAINTENANCE: These houses you’re moving into are old, and so are many of its appliances, fixtures, accoutrements, etc. Toilets overflow, ceilings buckle and lose their stuffing, the heat fails to come on, the sterilizer can be temperamental,the dryer won’t work, etc. etc. For all such scenarios, please call Yard Operations at 617-495-1874 (there is also a 24-hour emergency maintenance number: 617-495-5560). You are REQUIRED to “plunge your own”. Give the plunger the old college try before calling yard ops, but if the plumbing doesn't cooperate, please call their number. They are intimately familiar with the coop and all its weaknesses. Usually yard ops/emergency maintenance will notify Bob Byrne, our building supervisor, of the problem, but if it’s a particularly notable disaster, please also call him and let him know (617-495-0747). These numbers are posted by the centrex phones in both 3-Sac and ’05. To use the Centrex phones, just dial the last five digits.
FIRE HAZARDS. We had a serious fire two years ago. We do not want another. The class of fire hazards includes not only open flame, sparks, candles, incense, hookas, cigarettes, etc. (which are all perfectly forbidden), but also the objects you will be tempted to leave or store in hallways, foyers, or any of the other common spaces this coop has to offer. Please don’t leave objects, large or small, in these places, for any duration of time. A fire creates conditions that greatly impede your escape: Hallways fill up with thick, black smoke FAST, you can’t see, and anything in your pathway, including the daintiest of flip-flops, serves as an obstacle to your safe and speedy exit out of the building. Do not leave stuff in the halls! And if the fire alarm goes off, high tail it out of the Coop. Don’t dally, don’t second-guess. Just get out of the building.
If there is a fire, pull one of the red fire alarms located in the hallways, yell, make a lot of noise, and get out of the building, call 911. Smoke alarms do not alert the fire department. Only the red pull alarms do that. Exception: smoke alarm in kitchen and dining room. FIRES, IN GREATER DETAIL: The fire place in your room (if there is one) is decorative, not functional. Please don’t use it.
If you’re cooking, and you start a grease fire, turn off the burner, pour baking soda (NOT water) in the pan (baking soda should be ready-at-hand near the stove), and cover the pan with a lid (leave the cover on; it will explodein your face if you peek in). If the fire is raging out of control, there isa chemical dump above the stove that releases at the pull of a pin inside awhite metal box located far to the left of the stove, next to the refrigerator. Please take time to locate it when you're in the kitchen. CALL THE FIRE DEPARTMENT (911). While you shouldn’t hesitate to use thepin option in the event of a raging stove fire, its deployment will shut down our kitchen for a week-long chemical cleanup. There’s also a fire extinguisher in the kitchen which you can use to fight a fire. Don’t use it for any other purpose but putting the fire out or helping you to escape, as the extinguisher also releases nasty chemicals that require special cleanup. If your toast or entrée smokes up the kitchen, quickly open all the windows and shut thedoor between the kitchen and the dining room. The smoke alarm in the dining room is distinguished from all other coop smoke alarms by the fact that it is connected directly to the City of Cambridge Fire Department. If it goes off, the Fire Department comes, and that often brings other city inspections in its wake, which we would prefer to avoid.
Food only in the microwave, please. No metal. That includes compact discs, which, it seems safe to assume, are made of of metal. Also, no underwire bras.
Clean the lint pelt out of the dryer screen. Don’t know where the dryerscreen is? Have someone show you. Lint will catch fire if you leave enough in the screen. No one-inch pelts of lint left on the dryer screen, please.
More to be said about fire safety at the meeting…
SECURITY: We’ve been robbed in the past. Strangers have walked into the coop, walked into rooms, and walked out with students’ belongings. Please don’t prop open front doors, and keep the basement doors to the outside closed and locked. If you are moving in, you may prop open the doors while you’re getting your stuff inside, so long as you can keep an eye on the front door, but close the door after you’re done. You’re encouraged to lock the doors to your rooms. WHERE DO I PARK? There are only two spots to the left of 3-Sac. If you’ll be parking there, leave your car keys in a mailbox, email the coop letting everyone know the make of your car and that your keys are accessible. That way everyone can leave when they want to. You can also park in the back lot of ’05. To get there, take a right onto Sacramento from Mass Ave, drive past 3-Sac and take a left into the parking lot that’s one or two houses down. Drive all the way back past the little park on your right and take a left into our lot. It may be impossible to not parkon the grass, but if there’s a choice, park in the gravelly part. If it’s late at night, don’t shine your headlights into the grey house that butts up against our fence on the left (when you are facing toward the back of ’05, yourback to the park). Also, keep your music down in the car, and refrain from doing anything else that might wake these people up or bother them. I suspect they may have called the police the last Coop party to complain about noise. We don’t want to antagonize them. Combo: 17-5. LOCK THE GATE! Parking is for coopers only. When you have guests, they can park back there for the duration of their visit (two weeks, max for guests here). Once we have our car roster, you should email the coop letting everyone know of guest carsby their make and license plate number. Otherwise the cars will be towed. In short, don’t advertise these spots to your best bud/girlfriend/boyfriend or any non-cooper.
WASHERS AND DRYERS are for you to use, and are free. Please put only CLEAN items in the dryer. That means your muddy running shoes do not go in the dryer.And try to keep the area clean. Don’t leave that puddle of detergent sitting on top of the dryer or on the floor. There’re sinks next to both washing machines with sponges and rags so that you can clean up these sorts of messes. And put the lint IN THE TRASH. And take your clothes back to your room. BICYCLES can be stored outside or in the basement, but NOT in the foyer or any other public space. That goes for your cute, fold-up bike, too. You absolutely may not lock up your bicycle to railings on either house—it’s a fire hazard and you'll really make the firemen who trek into our house with all their heavy bulky equipment quite mad ifyou lock your bike to porch railings. Also, wear a helmet.
KITCHEN/FOOD: The points system won’t be up and running until Monday September 17th. The kitchen and all that it has to offer, including food not marked “private”, is all yours. But CLEAN UP YOUR MESS, and do this directly after making the mess, not two hours/days later. Also, some of our appliances are delicate, fussy things and need special handling so don’t hesitate to ask someone how to use them.
NONHUMAN ANIMALS: No, the dog/cat/bunny-rabbit/fish/iguana/canary may not move in with you. At least, not until the Coop has had a chance to approve the critter. And this takes a house meeting (NOT the first, big meeting), in person, *not* over email. If you don’t go through the proper pet-approval channels, the little darling will have to stay at the boarder until (s)he gets approved. ’05 is the only house that can host pets.
ALLERGIES TO NONHUMAN ANIMALS If you have allergies to animals it’s best to go for a room in 3-Sac as’05 may come to host someone’s pet. We’ll remind you of this at Room Draw.
UNDERGRADUATE COORDINATOR Carvina Williams is undergraduate coordinator. She can be reached at ududley@fas.harvard.edu
TUTORS We’re here to ensure your health and safety, first and foremost. If youhave any questions, or are feeling a bit anxious about moving into the coop, you can come talk to us. And you’ll be fine. The coop is a great place to live. We’ll be going over our role in the house in more detail at the big meeting.
DISCOVER DUDLEY: Stay tuned for info about this really fun event, held Friday 9/12 in the evening. Don't try to escape. You're definitely coming. UNDERGRADUATE RECEPTION The new members of Dudley’s undergraduate staff are looking forward to meeting you at this event, including our Resident Dean Karen Flood, our Fellowships/BGLTS tutor EcceTurnator, non Res tutors Ian and Lotte, and Joanna Grossman our sophomore advisor. Dudley house is the nonresident house for the coop, off-campus undergrads, and the gsas population, so there'll be a motley crew at this event. Graduate fellows and undergraduate staff will be wearing costumes (excepting you, unless you want to wear a costume). It’ll be fun.
Undergraduate Reception will be the second week of classes (a couple of days before study cards are due), in Dudley House. Stay Tuned. There’ll be food and drinks, Dudley’s entire undergrad staff will be there. Please come,even if it’s just to drop by for a few minutes to introduce yourself and grab abite to eat.
WE LIVE IN A GREAT NEIGHBORHOOD! We have corporate and noncorporate coffee houses across the street, an awesome video store, and the food is out of sight and inexpensive at Boca Grande. Brooks Pharmacy has most of what a CVS has to offer, with its own distinctive charm, and there’s a 24-hour CVS up Mass Ave, at Porter Square. Porter Square also has a Shaws (Star?) Supermarket and a hunting store that sells neon orange caps, a color which, incidentally, is quite flattering on coopers. The Evergood Market directly across the street has most of what you might need for cooking yourself a meal, although it’s more expensive than Shaws. They have fresh baked goods every morning. The croissants and raisin roles are awesome.
AND FINALLY: Tutors will go over all of this and more in further detail at the big meeting.
xo! TUTORS
