New Student Housing Co-op Cultivates Students’ Relationship with Geneseo

GENESEO – A team of highly driven college students is making waves in Geneseo with their plans to integrate more college students into the village community.

SUNY Geneseo students Sarah Diaz, 21, and Tom Silva, 21, worked together to earn a $5,000 grant through the college’s Center for Inquiry, Discovery, and Development to get a new student housing cooperative on its feet. They call it the Genesee Valley Cooperative, whereby residents of their house become equal-share owners of the property and become involved in local events and agriculture.

“The co-op is built as a horizontal hierarchy,” said Silva. “Each resident is an equal-share owner of the property. It saves a lot of stress in the renting process for students in Geneseo.”

The goal is to eventually sign Master Leases with the landord of two houses on North Street and make them available to interested students at a reduced price, and eventually for free.

The residents of their house are all driven and talented college students who want to host workshops in the community to share their talents with others in Geneseo. For example, the group will be teaming up with the Cornell Cooperative Extension to host a canning workshop on November 2, likely in the Presbyterian Church on Center Street.

The Co-op lets students engage with the community on a different level than just living in a dorm or village house and walking to and from campus every day. On Thursday, the Co-op hosted a dinner at the Presbyterian Church, offering a wide variety of dishes cooked with vegetables from local farms. Among their more than 80 guests were William Wadsworth, Town Supervisor, Director of the Livingston County Development Corps, Louise Wadsworth, Director of Center for Inquiry, Discovery, and Development Cynthia Oswald, and several SUNY professors.

“I went to a farm today that I didn’t know much about,” said Diaz. “The farmer was like ‘We have a bunch of raspberries that are going to rot, you should go ahead and harvest them.'”

The Co-op currently operates from a single house, 14 Avon Road, with eight student residents: Sarah Diaz, Tom Silva, Nathan Kahn, Jenna Chervin, Sean Neill, Monica Horowitz, Agnes Link-Harrington, Holly Kandel.

Students Julia Lewis, Lillian Mayer, Catherine McWilliams are heavily involved in community events, and make and eat dinner with co-op twice a week.

The Co-op is not affiliated with the Presbyterian church.

PHOTO CAPTION: Top – Dr. Ken Cooper, left, professor of English at SUNY, piles up a plate alongside Geneseo town supervisor William Wadsworth. right, at Thursday’s dinner with the Genesee Valley Co-op.

Bottom – Hungry guests wait patiently for plates piled high with vegetables from local farms, courtesy of the Genesee Valley Co-op.