The newly formed Culinary Arts House, or "Cooking House," will take its place among the 19 returning program houses for the 2006-2007 academic year. Following a recommendation from Residential Council, the Office of Residential Life selected Cooking House from a pool of three new program house applicants, which also included Film House and Martial Arts House.
Cooking House was created and coordinated by Herald Cartoonist Christine Sunu '09, who was inspired by the restaurant at her brother's residence hall at Wesleyan University. Because the creation of a permanent student-run restaurant was not feasible, Sunu was inspired to create an organization in which students would have an opportunity to operate a restaurant several times a year and learn to cook skillfully, she said.
Sunu cited the myriad values of cooking. "It is relaxing, it is creative ... it is a kind of mediation that brings together a lot of different elements - like creativity, like precision," she said. She also cited the value of cooking as a service activity. "Cooking House is centered around making (the service) aspect of cooking a larger part of your residential life," Sunu said.
Sunu said Cooking House has three primary aims: creating an open-minded community by bringing together a variety of cultures and diets, improving individual cooking skills through group participation and using these skills toward a common good.
Cooking House will rotate through monthly themes and experiment with cooking vegetarian and vegan meals in order to accommodate a variety of diets, she said.
According to Sunu, 23 people are currently signed up to live in Cooking House next year, although the location of the house is still uncertain. Most of its residents heard about it by word-of-mouth, as well as from online advertisements posted on the Daily Jolt and Facebook.com, she said. Among the 23 members are eight rising upperclassmen and 15 rising sophomores, she said. To form a program house, a group must have between 22 and 30 potential residents, and at least one-quarter of these must be rising upperclassmen.
Other requirements for program houses include hosting two social and two community service events per semester, identifying a faculty sponsor and drafting a constitution, said Tal Itzkovich '06, program house committee chair for ResCouncil.
One event Cooking House might hold several times next year involves setting up a themed restaurant to be run and staffed by students for one night in a space rented from the University, Sunu said. She said future residents are also considering a picnic, complete with a pie-eating contest and possibly an Iron Chef-like face-off. Potential members also hope to bring chefs and members of the food service industry to campus to demonstrate their cooking skills, she said.
Cooking House is also looking to collaborate on events with other student organizations, she said, adding that members would love to do catering but will have to check with Brown Student Agencies to see if this will be possible. Cooking House is still working on ideas to raise funds to cover these events, she said.
For service events, Sunu said Cooking House is looking to get involved with existing organizations, such as Ronald McDonald House and Fast Food Facts, a group that helps teach kids about nutrition. "Activities are going to include everything from cooking for the House, to encouraging nutrition on campus, to serving in soup kitchens throughout Providence," she said.
Though, as Sunu noted, "(Cooking) is sometimes characterized as a female activity," the house has managed to overcome any gender bias associated with the activity. The residents are nearly evenly divided by gender, with 11 male and 12 female residents, she said.
Sunu said she was encouraged by the strong positive response Cooking House has received. "We basically put the whole thing together in like a week. That's a pretty positive response," she said.
There is no skill level required to join Cooking House, apart from an enthusiasm for food. "Anyone who liked the idea enough ... to sign on without even knowing where it is going to be (located) next year - we figure that is enough of an admission requirement right now," Sunu said, adding that next year there will likely be an application process in order to bring in a full range of skill levels.
Rosario Navarro, assistant director of housing for ResLife, said she viewed Cooking House's need for access to a kitchen as the most compelling reason it should become a residential community rather than just a student organization. Navarro said that, though she believed Film House presented a great proposal, she didn't believe it needed a residential facility to carry out its mission.
According to Itzkovich, Film House was declined after the first round of applications due to a perceived overlap with Art House and the Brown Film Society. Itzkovich said ResCouncil was also concerned about plans for large-scale screenings, which would likely run the risk of violating copyright laws.
Martial Arts House was unable to meet the 22-person minimum requirement to form a program house and withdrew its application, he said.
The two youngest program houses on campus are Arts House and Interfaith House, which were both added in the 2003-2004 academic year. Feminist House also applied that year but was declined, Itzkovich said.
This is the first year ResCouncil has had an open call for program house applications without a specific residential location in mind, Itzkovich said. In the past, applications were generally only accepted when another program house dissolved and left a particular space open, he said.
"Every year you have freshmen who want to try to escape the housing lottery (and) think that program housing is the way to do it, and very rarely do they actually succeed," he said.
Itzkovich explained that the possibility of a few existing program houses dissolving after this year influenced the decision to open up applications. After ResCouncil reviewed program houses in the fall, Games House and Delta Tau were placed on probation due to concerns that they could not meet the minimum number of members needed to continue, he said. While preliminary reports suggest that Delta Tau has met the required membership after rush, Games House has decided not to conduct a rush and will dissolve at the end of this academic year, he said.
According to Itzkovich, ResCouncil has taken it upon itself to streamline and standardize program house guidelines after some program house members cited confusion about requirements. The changes to program house guidelines were designed to make houses more accountable for accomplishing program house requirements (like holding social and community service events) in order to justify taking the residential and common areas away from other students, he said.
Itzkovich said it has been challenging to find a location for Cooking House and that, if ResCouncil does allow an open application process next year, "it will be a lot more stringent as to who gets to go on to the second and third step of the whole process."
"Our responsibility as ResCouncil is to only allow houses that will be both sustainable and will last a very long time. We're trying to build institutions here (that will) also will contribute back to the community," he said.
