The announcement that UC Davis Student Housing will shut down the Domes — a Davis landmark and local sanctuary — is rash and unwarranted. Had it not been for the Domes, I would not have gone to UCD for graduate school, or for that matter, met my wife.

After receiving my B.S. from UC Berkeley, I fell in love with sustainable agriculture and worked at an organic farm on the Mendocino coast. When summer came, I had to decide whether to keep living the idyllic farm life or accept an offer from the entomology department and move to Davis.

The two things that convinced me to move to Davis were my major adviser, Phil Ward, and the Domes. I knew that my academic needs would be met in the Ward lab, and that those other equally important needs of mine — to grow my own food, to raise bees and harvest my own honey, to share work, meals and daily conversation with peers who felt so strongly about making the world a better place — those would be fulfilled by the Domes.

The promise of the Domes lies with the continuity of its community. Student Housing’s decision to not offer new leases after July 31 threatens to terminate one of the most long-standing, innovative and successful experiments ever initiated on UC Davis grounds.

Domes residents have independently cared for their land, their structures and each other for 39 consecutive years. That the Domes have lasted so long — where so many other initiatives and communities have failed — is proof that its community structure is a recipe for adaptability and resilience.

I visited the Domes last week to see the situation for myself. Do a few of the Domes need repairs? Sure. Is the situation so dire that this 39-year-old community must be immediately dissolved and its land and structures bulldozed? Absolutely not.

The long-term success of the Domes highlights the short-sighted failure of Student Housing to see the Domes for what they are: an educational resource, brimming with an agricultural, biological and interdisciplinary diversity found nowhere else on the UC Davis campus.

Eli Sarnat

Happy Camp

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