In the past four decades, Café Hoop has gone from being open 24 hours a day to 12, then six, and now, only three. As of this month, Hoop is no longer open on Tuesdays, in addition to the original Mondays and Sundays it is closed. El Table is approaching its 122nd birthday and has also recently shortened its operational hours. Pub, Hoop’s neighbor on the first floor of Lulu Campus Center, has been gone for three years.
These changes invite some questions: Has Wellesley outgrown these spaces? Does the kind of community these spaces were built for still exist? Are co-ops simply relics of another campus era?
While many on campus can testify to the importance of cooperative spaces, our community seems to forget much of the history that once made their meaning obvious. Wellesley promotes new opportunities for student autonomy and leadership while simultaneously obscuring existing spaces and programs that celebrate more than a century of radically interdependent work, creativity and joy.
Wellesley’s student culture has not been the same since before the COVID-19 pandemic. A years-long disruption led to fading traditions, the absence of crucial relationships and the obstruction of institutional memory for many organizations on campus.
Co-ops experienced this loss especially acutely: operational wisdom that was traditionally kept alive through gradual handoff has become hazy. Sensing a need for change, we, as members of the co-ops, formed an archival research committee. We began reaching out to alums, intent on recovering the wisdom embedded in our spaces and the relationships that they have fostered. What we found was a remarkable throughline of care sustained through decades of difficult — and often invisible — work.
El Table, founded in 1904, was originally a table by an elevator (“El”). Stationed in College Hall, it sold tickets for events and Legenda subscriptions. After the 1914 fire, it switched to a lemonade stand on Chapel Lawn. When El acquired its current physical space in Founders in 1931, it transitioned to a convenience store, selling candy, gum, school supplies and even cigarettes. Later, when El became a café, students sold “famous” brownies that were baked fresh in Natick, ice cream, glass bottles of Coke and camera film. El finally started selling its signature warm sandwiches in 1963. Beyond its food, El has always been a center for the campus community. Aside from spam for org events, its spam boards used to host a section for finding rides to other colleges and cities, buy-and-sell notes and even lost-and-found ads. It has been a hub for political action since at least the ’60s, when students protesting the Vietnam War were restricted from gathering outside. In more recent history, El ran a catering business prior to COVID-19, a reminder that while the form of El has changed over the years, its core as a space for connection and student initiative has remained pivotal.
Café Hoop opened on April 14, 1983, in the basement of the Schneider Student Center, which has since transitioned to an administrative building. Founded by Amy Reece ’83 and Cynthia Schell ’83, it quickly became something more than a café; it became a space for counterculture, improvisation and spontaneous joy — a refuge from the pressures of the Wellesley bubble. Students would go there after dining hall hours for late-night snacks, throughout the day for a coffee, or to gather for parties, events, and community bonding.
The space, formerly a large pottery studio, was rapidly transformed during Spring Weekend 1983 into an 8-room café serving coffee, tea, light fare and video games. In 2005, after much deliberation, Café Hoop begrudgingly moved to the first floor of the Lulu Campus Center. Mere steps away from WZLY, Old Hoop now sits empty, save for expansive murals that still stretch across its cave-like walls. While the Noopie Class of ’05 was tasked with beautifying the new Hoop, the space (like its menu) is constantly evolving. Today, Hoop is cluttered, warm and vibrant in the way only a truly well-loved place can be — it feels inherited.
There are moments, as modern-day Hoopies and El Tablers, when our shifts carry a trace of unease. On slow days, our doors open into quiet hallways and our fears of disappearing rise to the surface. When hours further truncate, profits shrink and newer, shinier spaces begin to reshape campus life, we face our fears becoming reality.
Cafe Hoop and El Table are not simply places to eat or gather. They are living classrooms for self-governance, where students learn alternative modes of working, thinking and, ultimately, living. Working horizontally, we reject traditional hierarchical structures and instead rely on reciprocal accountability. The cooperative model is designed to transform society by transforming ourselves, entirely reorienting our understandings of what kinds of relationships are valuable and effective.
They are also crucial third spaces; every day, students and professors come to work, recharge, celebrate, listen to music, talk to one another, organize and educate. At a college oriented around achievement and productivity, our co-ops strive to carve out space and time for community care, working tirelessly to make belonging inherent. That work is especially important in spaces that support and celebrate our QTBIPOC siblings. Even within a bubble like Wellesley, it is important to maintain intentional spaces in which people feel safe and cared for.
Over the course of the semester, we have worked hard to build cross-co-op solidarity and recover our histories through extensive archival research and alum outreach. This work is ongoing and collective. But if co-ops are to survive, they cannot be kept by our memory alone; we require recognition, participation and care in the present. We invite the community to be part of that process — to listen, learn and engage with this living history at our Co-Op Exhibition and Storytelling Night on April 22. This is not a conclusion, but one step in a much longer effort to comprehend our legacy, preserve our value and reimagine how cooperative spaces can best serve our community.
Wellesley must not treat co-ops as outdated holdovers, and it cannot reduce their role to mere businesses. We must see them fully as they are — as testaments to student agency, memory and care. When we lose sight of our history, we lose our capacity to dream of what campus life could be. When we remember it and let it inspire us, we find the strength to fight for our radical existence.
Contact the editors responsible for this article: Caitlin Donovan, Avery Finley
