Who Are We?

Meet SCoop, the Sustainable housing cooperative on Wellesley College's Campus in Wellesley, Massachusetts. There are 16 of us here, with the majority of us being queer and/or trans people of color. As a living space, we practice holistic sustainability informed by our passions, politics, and identities.

SCoop completely funds itself on a pay-what-you-can basis from all of our members: 100% of our food, cooking supplies, cleaning supplies, and home items have been bought by us! We are a completely autonomous space at a PWI that, unfortunately, does not protect nor prioritize its students of color, trans students, or disabled students. As such, we have built our own support structures to provide COVID resources for ourselves and our greater campus community.

We are also a COVID-conscious space and believe that preventing the spread of disabling illnesses is an act of community sustainability. This is not just an ideological stance either; many of our members have long COVID and are otherwise disabled or immunocompromised.

Founded in the 1982-1983 school year, Instead (then called Oakwoods) was established as an alternative living situation to the normal residential life on Wellesley campus. Instead provides a space on campus which serves as an intellectual focus and forum for feminist issues, recognizing that traditional dorm life does not encourage the fostering of a feminist consciousness. Our space is dedicated to being inclusive, radically empathetic, and a safe space for any and all Wellesley students but especially queer & trans students of color.

We believe that feminism cannot exist if it does not intentionally and radically include, affirm and love disabled people.

Why Do We Need Help?

We recently received a boatload of masks and rapid COVID tests from Boston Covid Action (a lovely and beautiful resource <3333) and are looking to be more self-sufficient and sustainable in our COVID mitigation strategies. We are looking to buy masks in bulk and get a home NAT testing kit.

But we are also full-time students, many of us have multiple jobs, and as a co-op, we are attempting to provide COVID tests and masks for our college campus community. Enter, you!

What Do We Need?

The goal of this fund is to provide us with the finances needed to kickstart and sustain our internal and external mask and COVID testing resources. We are aiming to purchase:

Please help us make our dreams of a COVID-safer campus life a reality, for us and our peers!

Find us on Instagram @_insteadgram and @scoopiestagram to see more of our life as communities.

EDIT: We have requested rapid tests from HHS and are looking into collaborating with mask blocks in ordering bulk/discounted rapid tests. We will no longer be spending 260 dollars on the pack of 50 Flowflex tests and instead will put that money towards buying more Pluslife testing kits. Recording of our spending and what we do with excess funds will be collected and posted for financial transparancy