Columbae

Columbae is Stanford’s first co-op, founded during the anti-war movement in 1970 as a home for students committed to social and environmental justice. For over 50 years, our home has been a tight-knit community built on the principle of consensus – we make decisions as a house on everything from food and rooming arrangements to house parties with the input and consent of every single member of our community.

Find Columbae on the Stanford Searchable Map here

More About Columbae

At the center of campus, Columbae’s cozy front porch and abundant lemon tree are the first things you’ll see when you walk onto the Row. You might smell the delicious scent of baking bread wafting out of the house from our signature bread bakes (a favorite house job) or hear a lively jam session on our house piano. We often eat our dinners on the porch or at the picnic tables we paint together every spring, sometimes featuring fresh herbs and vegetables from our beautiful garden. Inside, you’ll find murals painted by decades of Columbae residents, a library of archives chronicling the history of co-op living at Stanford, our warm couch-filled living room, and our always lively kitchen – the heart of our home. Most residents swap rooms every quarter through a consensus-based rooming process.

Our house has always been a home of student activism and teach-ins on campus, but we also work to realize our commitment to social justice through collective labor and aligning our house’s purchasing practices with our political values. Historically, our house has committed to ethical and sustainable food consumption through vegetarianism, though our house meat consumption is always decided through consensus. We have always been home to people who make diverse food choices.

In Columbae, there’s always someone to talk to – about where you backpacked over the summer and your favorite musicians or about what it means to live in an intentional, values-based community. Living here is a chance to build a different kind of home.

Access an audio tour of the house

About the Columbae Theme

As a house community, we commit ourselves to doing the labor of cooking, cleaning, and living together. Living in a co-op is a special opportunity to learn how to care for ourselves and each other.

To run the house ourselves, each resident has a weekly and bi-weekly job that involves cooking, cleaning, baking, or gardening, along with one job closing the house at the end of the quarter and one job helping with a house event each quarter. Weekly and biweekly jobs take 2-3 hours per shift, totaling an average of 3-4 hours of labor each week of the quarter. Residents choose jobs at the beginning of each quarter, and staff can accommodate any accessibility concerns.

Residents are asked to attend weekly house meetings to participate in building our collective community and make important house decisions based on consensus.

Each resident takes on one project a year related to our theme, Social Change through Collective Action. Past projects have been teach-ins, workshops, and field trips. We encourage residents to share about their backgrounds, communities, or activism. Residents also participate in F*#% the System week in the Spring Quarter: a series of events, workshops, teach-ins, and performances, dedicated to social justice and liberation.