".. . a long series of hassels. Rochdale is a chance to be
yourself and learn. Rochdale is a long series of blunders.
Rocdale is a manageable community of people."
Rochdale Daily, Nov. 22, 1968
"... a posh 18-storey haven for hairy dropouts,
acidheads, filthy hippies and smart alecs who
like to drop eggs on the heads of passers-by..."
Unnamed University of Toronto student, to a newspaper reporter.
"still not completely finished ... a 24-hour circus ... an intellectual
center for Toronto as well as a haven for dropouts, and the interaction
between the committed and the aimless is unique."
Spectrum, University of Buffalo.
"... the biggest and most glorious mindfuck ever devised by man.
Improvising a structure while doing your own thing and learning to live
with 849 other people puts people through changes that non one last year
was really prepared to consider. What is lacking is: a new sense of
privacy and what it means in
a situation like this; consideration, on a scale totally impossible
for people used to institutions that do things for you instaed of letting
you do things for yourself; a willingness to accept personal failure
as inevitable sometimes and the ability to accept failure playfully
and grow from its consequences; an awareness of the needs
and a sensitivity to the condition of the community as a whole..."
Paul Evitts Rochdale Weekly, Oct. 27-Nov. 2, 1968
" ... a serious-minded experimental attempt to grapple anew with
the perenial issues of education in a way that is relevant to our situation
in the second half of the twentieth century."
Rochdale Catalog, 1967.
"a framework within or around which people might learn wherein
their own learning process, both matter and structure, lies, and
where they may pursue it. The different people growing and interacting
are Rochdale, a fluid environment which will continue to
evolve and develop as long as the people do. Cyclic involvement.Ecology. Om."
Tom Saask, Rochdale Calendar, 1968.
"a revolution, but like any revolution it just won't
work unless people are prepared to participate fully ...
if you ask a Rochdaler what he's studying, he'll probably
look at you as though you crawled from under a stone,
and answer simply, 'Life.'"
Toronto Weekly Magazine
"in a way an outgrowth of student power, an attempt to start
another freer, perhaps more creative way of learning
alongside the traditional university structure.
Although the college's future is still dubious and its
educational experiment has yet to get into any discernable
form, the concept behind it is spreading fast."
Toronto Globe and Mail, Jan. 1969.
"an enormously exciting alternative ... It consists of learning
the rules of the game by which most people play out their lives
in our case, those of the technological society -- and then using
them to create ways of Life which subvert the values those rules
usually serve."
Dennis Lee, Rochdale Handbook, 1968.
All quotes from a printed packet I call the
"Rochdale Onion" from the negative photograph of an onion on
its black outside cover, circa 1969.