What is a coordinator?

All of us as members run Cloyne and the BSC collectively — so what’s unique about coordinators? Coordinators are members who are elected to do certain jobs in the house. Many of the positions are compensated with room-and-board credit (in addition to full workshift hours), and many others provide full or partial workshift hours.

You don’t need to have special knowledge, skills, or experience to run for a position! One of the beautiful parts about the co-ops is that most of us are doing these things for the first time. In addition, one of the duties of the House Presidents, the Facilities Coordinator, and the coord team as a whole is to support new members to get involved and grow through the process.

Coordinators were renamed from “managers” at the end of Summer 2019 to better reflect the power that we actually have (/lack). Coordinators are democratically accountable to the members, who vote to elect us and who can also recall us. Part of having these positions is delegating certain powers. Although we should think about democratizing our coordinator structure further, the current structure tries to account for the fact that having a few people coordinate workshift assignments (for example) is a lot more practical than Council doing so. That said, in addition to recalling coordinators, members can always override a coordinator’s decision through Council.

But what do coordinators do? You should read Cloyne’s job descriptions for any positions that interest you, because they’re all very unique. Many positions also work with their own crews (e.g., garden, network, IKC, dungeon, etc.). And last but not least, we work collaboratively as a coordinator team! The Operations Team works on habitability, safety, emergency preparedness, and more. Meanwhile, the Community Team works on planning events and promoting anti-oppression and inclusion.

Coordinators shouldn’t have much power over members (by design), but we do have a huge impact on the house as a whole. In a word, the work that we do is really crucial in creating and sustaining a cooperative housing community — one that is habitable, anti-oppressive, inclusive, democratic, collaborative, and low-cost! You’ll be challenged as a coordinator, but you will also learn a lot about yourself, working with others, and so much more. 

Have more questions? Here are some helpful resources: