Ever since the creation of Barrows House a community of likeminded young individuals have resided in the house. Berkeley is a very expensive city to live in, especially if you’re a student. Though there are no requirements as to whether you are a student at U.C. Berkeley or not, most of the residents and community members are either alumni or currently studying at U.C. Berkeley. Since Barrows House is a non-profit organization, it offers below market-rate housing which removes some of the stress that many students experience in relation to their financial situation. Barrows House hereby gives its residents the opportunity to focus on their studies and building meaningful friendships instead of worrying about living costs.
"I was not expecting people in this house to be as close as they are," my roommate Sydney once noted to me as I was getting ready to go join my housemates for yet another movie night. As an exchange student at U.C. Berkeley majoring in American Studies, I deliberately chose to move into Barrows House as I wanted to experience everyday life with American college students while also gaining perspective on some of my classes at my home university in Denmark. What I did not expect would happen by moving into Barrows House was how I would become a part of a small community that socialized together, helped each other through difficult times and genuinely cared for one another. Barrows House has helped me form strong bonds and friendships with my fellow housemates and provided me with a safety network in a time of a public health crisis.
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| Pictured from the top left: Ana Gallegos Cruz, Catherine "Cate" Lopez, Emma Saadi Mejlstrup, Dakota Marie Churchill, Mary Tan, Marina Fox, Ruth Frausto |
In addition to being associated with the university, every community member is in their early to mid-twenties which creates common ground for us as we are all in the place in our lives. Moreover, there is a dynamic in which every community member has a say in how the house is being run. The house managers are students themselves and are as much a part of our tight-knit friendship group as any other resident. In the time of COVID-19, we have decided to all help the managers wipe the surfaces of the house with bleach twice a day. In our community, there is a sense of solidarity present at all times, but especially in times of crises.
After providing students with affordable housing and offering its residents scholarships for nearly three decades, the Phi Kappa Sigma board is looking to take over the building, evict its current residents, and turn it back into a fraternity house. If the board succeeds in taking over the building, Barrows House will cease to exist and its vibrant community will perish along with it. Thus, it will leave around 40 students homeless. The sense of community, in this sense, becomes even more enforced as the community stands together against the immense challenge it now faces. In the Manifesto of the Communist Party, Karl Marx and Frederick Engels explains that "the history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles."3 Moreover, Marx' notion of the proletarians and the bourgeois can be mirrored in the students residing at Barrows House and the Phi Kappa Sigma board consisting of wealthy, middle-aged men who are in control and are making the executive decisions of removing the indebted students from their home.
Works Cited
1 "Campus Life: Berkeley; After Fatal Fire, A Drive to Require Sprinkler Systems." In The New York Times, february 17, 1991 https://www.nytimes.com/1991/02/17/nyregion/campus-life-berkeley-after-fatal-fire-a-drive-to-require-sprinkler-systems.html↩
2 Hill-Holtzman, Natalie. "3 UC Berkeley Students Perish in Blaze at Fraternity House ." In Los Angeles Times. September 9, 1990. https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1990-09-09-mn-302-story.html ↩
3 Marx, Karl, and Friedrich Engels. 2011. The Communist Manifesto. New York: Penguin Books.
