Rochdale College
Opened in 1968, Rochdale College was an experiment in alternative student-run education and co-operative living in Toronto, Canada. Also known as the Rochdale Project, it was associated with Innis College, University of Toronto.
Co-operative Housing experiment
Rochdale was the largest co-op residence in North America, and the second co-op student residence opened in Canada. Rochdale occupied an 18 story student residence at Bloor St. and Huron St. in Toronto. It was situated on the edges of the University of Toronto campus and near Yorkville, Canada’s hippie haven in the 1960s and early 1970s.
Rochdale took its name from Rochdale, England, where the world's first attempt at cooperative housing took place in the 1800s.
The college’s modern architecture was uniquely designed for communal living, divided into independently operated communal units of about a dozen bedrooms, each with its own collective washroom, kitchen and dining room. Each unit was responsible for collecting rent, and maintaining its own housekeeping.
Educational ideals
In the late sixties, universities were a centre of political idealism and experimentation. Rochdale College was established as an alternative to what were considered traditional paternalistic and non-democratic governing bodies within university education. Conversely, Rochdale's government policy was decided at open meetings in which all members of the co-operative could attend, participate in debate, and vote.
It was the largest of more than 300 tuition-free universities in North America, and offered no structured courses, curriculum, exams, degrees, or traditional teaching faculty. It became a hot bed of free thought and radical idealism, in many ways resembling a tribal community.
Traditional professors were replaced by “Resource People” of various academic and non-academic backgrounds, who would lead informal discussion groups on a wide variety of subjects, as opposed to structured classes. A Resource Person of note was author Dennis Lee.
Students had complete freedom to develop their own learning process, much of which emerged from the shared community experience. The college included theatres for drama and film, and a ceramics studio. Students decided school policy and made their own evaluations.
Rochdale students where involved with various cultural institutions in Toronto such as Coach House Press, Theatre Passe Muraille, The Toronto Free Dance Theatre, and House of Anansi Press.
It was typical of the free universities not to award degrees and the University of Toronto did not offer degrees through Rochdale College, but anyone could purchase a B.A. by donating $25 to the college and answering a simple skill-testing question. An M.A. was $50, and the applicant could pick the question. A Ph.D. did not require any skill-testing question, and went for $100.
The Rochdale application also described its “non-degree:” “We are also offering Non-Degrees at comparable rates. A Non-Ph.D. is $25.00. Course duration is your choice; requirements are simple, we ask that you say something. A Non-M.A. is $50.00 for which we require you to say something logical. A Non-B.A. is $100.00; you will be required to say something useful."
Rochdale ran its own radio station called CRUD, with a bizarre assortment of music, talk and static. The CRTC tried to shut the station down a number of times, but the dedication of its staff kept it on the air.
The college’s arts programmer, a film buff by the name of Reg Hartt, was secretly approached to find a bootleg copy of the porn classic, Deep Throat. When he actually screened it at the college, he charged $10 admission, but no charge for those who came naked.
The Rochdale community was very tolerant, so it was not unusual for residents to wander nude or openly use hard drugs within its rooms and corridors.
Drug culture
By 1971, Rochdale’s reputation in the press was as "North America's largest drug distribution warehouse" and it had become a haven for American draft dodgers. The school had an unofficial alliance with the Vagabonds motorcycle club. Members of the biker gang provided security for the college. Ironically, the student government initially formed a security force partly because of the troubles caused by drug dealing, with which the bikers were involved.
As nearby Yorkville became gentrified, much of its fringe element ended up at Rochdale. Rochdale’s educational focus gradually deteriorated as the drug business increased because of non-student and non-resident crowds that were always hanging around. The college became known particularly as a place to purchase the hardest drugs.
With the increase in clashes with police, drug overdoses and drug related deaths, political pressure forced Rochdale to close in 1975, but a number of students refused to leave. On May 30 the last residents were carried from the building by police. The doors to the college had to be welded shut.
The building
The 18 story tower that once housed Rochdale at 341 Bloor Street is now known as the Senator David A. Croll Apartments. Completed in 1968, it is the sister building to the Tartu student residence across the street. Designed by the architects Tampold and Wells (who had earlier constructed the Charles Street apartments at Bay Street and Bloor Street), it is ironic that such as a hub of creativity and counter cultural ideology was housed within such a harsh, yet restained, concrete Brutalism.
As homage to its Rochdale days, the tower features the large and intriguing “Unknown Student” sculpture out front.
"Love it or loathe it, Rochdale College is hard to dismiss even 20 years after its closing." (University of Toronto Magazine, Spring, 1995, p.38.)