‘Disposable lifestyle’: F&M encourages students to donate not throw away usable items during move out | Local News

Looking for an air fryer, a light bulb, a suitcase?

These are just a few examples of items discarded by Franklin & Marshall College students over the last week as the school year ended.

“Furniture, electronics, cleaning supplies, lamps – you name it, it’s been in the trash can, which is a real shame when so many people are in a space where (those items could) be utilized,” said Kari Stanley, who lives on Mary Street a few blocks from the college.

Several of the private college’s neighbors told the Watchdog of their concerns about the number of usable items students are throwing out.

Stanley said she wishes the college would organize a way to donate items students may no longer need that aren’t quite ready for the landfill. She and her neighbors say they’d even help.

The college says it’s been collecting donations in some form or another for decades. Still, judging by the dumpsters outside the school’s residence halls, some students aren’t getting the memo.

“This generation has been raised on the disposable lifestyle,” Stanley said.

Dips Donate

Nicholas Auwaerter, director of F&M’s Center for Sustainable Environment, said a program dedicated to reusing and recycling students’ unwanted items launched last year.

Staff and students volunteering as part of Dips Donate — Dips being short for the college’s mascot, a Diplomat — place bins in residence halls around campus for students to leave items for donation.

Bins were placed April 15 this year ahead of a May 4 move-out date, said Auwaerter, and volunteers regularly collected items, which were sorted for donation.

While bins were placed in each on-campus location, F&M’s neighbors said they noticed many usable items being discarded near the college’s three affiliated off-campus locations, the College Row, College Hill and James Street Housing properties.

Auwaerter said the college placed 18 bins in the College Row apartments, while James Street Housing organized its own system for collecting donations.

“We encourage residents to donate gently used items, food and school supplies they no longer need through our community partnerships, which support those in need and help reduce waste,” College Row spokesperson Alyssa Bauer said via email.

The Dips Donate organizers are still figuring out where items could be donated, but Auwaerter said they worked closely with Church World Service last year to give some items to the Community Aid thrift store. But funding cuts to CWS, ordered by President Donald Trump, mean the nonprofit has a limited staff and can no longer facilitate donations to Community Aid.

Auwaerter’s sustainability center wasn’t immune to cuts this year either; two of its employees were laid off in April leaving Auwaerter to rely more on volunteers.

“We’re constantly looking at how we can evolve a program and how we can capture more items… figuring out what we can target in the future and how we can convince students to be more proactive in what … when they’re looking at things last minute … they need to get rid of,” Auwaerter said.

The major problem for students is timing, Auwaerter said. With final exams and a short turnaround for moving out, he said there’s just not enough time for students to plan what to do with unwanted, but still usable, items, like shelves, appliances and clothes.

Auwaerter said the sustainability center is creating a new space in its building, the Give and Take Room, known as the GATR, which will be open year-round to accept and rehome clothing, furniture and other donations.

Elias Mitchell, a sophomore student employee in the Center for Sustainable Environment, said emails were sent to students and signs posted on campus informing them about Dips Donate and teaching them about sustainability.

Dips Donate has “been a huge success,” Mitchell said from a small room soon to be dubbed the GATR. “We got so much stuff, so many clothes, so many items from everyone.”

Dump and Run

F&M’s neighbors said the school ought to bring back the annual Dump and Run sale, which was organized by the college from 2005 until at least 2017, according to LNP | LancasterOnline archives.

The sale collected enough used furniture, food and other dorm essentials in the college’s Mayser Gymnasium to net $3,600 in 2016, which was donated to a public school mentoring program and an emergency fund for its own students facing unexpected financial hardship.

Several factors contributed to the Dump and Run program’s demise, including a location change necessitated by F&M’s decision to move graduation into Mayser Gymnasium, Auwaerter said.

Sonja Crafts, who lives on Frederick Street a few blocks away from the college, said Dump and Run was an efficient way to handle students’ discards.

“If the college truly doesn’t have the ability to do this … I know for a fact there would be so many community volunteers,” Crafts said.

Crafts leads the Reynolds Middle School parent teacher organization, which she said could get involved in organizing another Dump and Run sale. Proceeds, she suggested, could go toward a field trip for middle school students.

Jessica Comp-Lewis, who lives on Mary Street, said she and her two daughters shopped and volunteered at the sale when it was active. The parent of a 2022 F&M grad, Comp-Lewis said reviving it “would be so beneficial, especially because we do live in a community that has so much need.”

And while she acknowledged the time pressures on students in the final weeks of the spring semester, Comp-Lewis said it’s not too much to ask them to separate items according to what should be trashed and what can be donated.

“What it feels to me as someone that lives in the neighborhood is, you just don’t care because you’re leaving,” she said.

In the meantime, students continue to fill up dumpsters with perfectly usable stuff, prompting college neighbors to take matters into their own hands, searching the dumpsters for items for themselves or to give to those in need, Comp-Lewis said.

“It doesn’t feel great to be looking through a dumpster,” Comp-Lewis said. “But if you’re in need and you could score hundreds of dollars worth of stuff that maybe your children need then you’re gonna do it.”

Dumpster diving, however, is prohibited on campus.

Auwaerter said staff and the public aren’t allowed to salvage items from the dumpsters because desirable items could be mixed in with hazards such as glass or something sharp, posing a safety risk.

“We value our relationship with our neighbors but we are concerned with scavenging for discarded items from containers, which puts their safety and well-being at risk,” F&M spokesperson Pete Durantine said via email.

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