Barrington Hall was a student housing cooperative in the University Students' Cooperative Association (USCA) (now known as the Berkeley Student Cooperative (BSC)) system in Berkeley, California, from 1935 to 1943 and 1950 to 1989. It is currently privately operated student housing. History The original Barrington Hall was a Sigma Nu fraternity house on Ridge Road leased from that fraternity in 1933. In 1935 the lease was allowed to expire and USCA purchased a building located at 2315 Dwight Way, to which the name Barrington Hall was transferred. The building was formerly the largest apartment house in Berkeley and would host 200 men when it opened the same year. It was leased to the U.S. Navy from 1943 to 1948; the Navy returned the building significantly upgraded. Barrington Hall, along with all the USCA residences, was always open to all students regardless of race, religion or nationality. In 1967, Barrington Hall's house council voted to become co-ed, which prompted the University to revoke their accreditation on the grounds of acting "in loco parentis". Throughout its history, Barrington Hall had a reputation for supporting social and political activism. In 1960, "Cal undergrads, particularly residents of the Barrington Hall co-op on Dwight Way, were part of the crowd of demonstrators protesting against the San Francisco meeting of the House Committee on Un-American Activities." By the time of the People's Park Riots in May 1969, Barrington Hall, which was only two blocks from People's Park, was an infamous place in Berkeley. The devotion to cooperation in a nation committed to competition bore radical fruit after thirty-five years. Barrington became a 'safe house' for deviance, good or ill. It was safe for unmarried men and women to live together, safe to paint and draw on the walls, safe to do or sell any drug, safe to crash in if you had no other place to stay. In the 1970s and 1980s, some of its members were very active in the anti-apartheid movement, and offered sanctuary and meals to the homeless. In 1984, Barrington residents voted to make the Hall open as an official sanctuary for refugees from El Salvador. According to the San Francisco Chronicle, complaints against Barrington started piling up in the early 1960s. One example from 1983 noted: "Resident complains not fit for habitability. Live boa constrictor, fire, dried blood on her door, food and burning matches thrown at dinner, person wandering through