Denison students celebrate 40 years of ‘ low-impact’ living at Homestead
GRANVILLE — Students who live at Denison University’s Homestead describe their lifestyle as “low-impact.”
Tucked in a clearing in the woods about a mile from campus, a common area and kitchen and two living cabins provide a different college experience.
Solar panels provide electricity. A wood-burning boiler provides heat. Cooking is atop a wood-burning stove. A well provides water. The toilets are of the composting variety.
Near a campus filled with Wi-Fi fed dormitories and the necessities of hightech life, this group of Denison students lives decidedly off the grid, chopping wood and cooking meals.
The way they describe their experience in self-governing and self-reliance is not low-impact, but rather high-impact in how it affects their lives.
Students, staff and alumni of the Homestead gathered on Saturday to mark 40 years of their atypical tenure. The communal meals and decisionmaking date to 1977.
Annabel Spranger, 20, a sophomore from Chicago majoring in geoscience and German, didn’t like her freshman year in a dormitory.
“This is so welcoming. We have a lot of control over our own living space. It feels more like a home. It really feels weird to call others my roommates — they’re family,” she said.
Eight students now live at the Homestead, where decisions are made by committee and they tend to egg-laying chickens (while trying to scare off foxes and raccoons) and a garden, in season, for their meals.
Beyond their small footprint, the students also enjoy a price break. Living simply costs $3,000 a year less than the room-and-board of the dorms. They revel in the choices they make for the common good.
Students meet weekly to ensure chores are being done and to determine how life goes in their simple slice of the world. It’s way more work than a dorm existence.
“They are taking responsibility for their lives in a much more conscious way than most of us do in our own homes,” said Linda Krumholz, an English professor and chair of the Homestead advisory board. Students are discarding distractions and embracing simple pleasures and truth, she said.
Al Dilorenzo, 20, a sophomore from Columbus majoring in studio art, calls Homestead living “high-contrast” to typical college life.
“It’s a community, a sense of family working together,” she said. “It makes you grow up a bit. You have to take care of yourself, and others.” She talked of becoming aware of how individual choices impact the bigger world, and of striving to give rather than take.
Thom Worm, 22, a senior geology major from Raleigh, North Carolina, likes his selfsufficiency. “I don’t love campus,” he said. “People don’t seem to have respect for their own space.”
Denison President Adam Weinberg showed up to the 40th anniversary celebration that included howwe-live tours, music, meditation and food.
“For many, it’s life transforming,” he said. “It’s a model of what Denison aspires to be ... autonomous thinking and engaged citizens. It’s learning what it means to be a morally driven person.”