Looking for an air fryer, a bulb, a suitcase?
These are only a few examples of articles rejected by the students of Franklin & Marshall College in the last week at the end of the school year.
“Furniture, electronics, cleaning supplies, lamps – you call it, it has been in the trash, which is a shame when so many people are in a space where (these items could) be used,” Kari Stanley, who lives on Mary Street, told a few pies of college houses.
Several neighbors of the private college have told the guard dog of their concerns about the number of articles that were used.
Stanley said she wanted the college to organize a way to give articles that students would no longer need who are not entirely ready for the discharge. She and her neighbors say they would even help.
The college says that it has been collecting donations in one form or another for decades. However, to judge by the clots outside the school residences, some students do not receive the memo.
“This generation was raised in disposable lifestyle,” said Stanley.
A dumpster used by students from Marshall Hall near the public security building on the Franklin and Marshall College campus, where students throw the garbage and various articles no longer need Monday, May 2025.
DIPS DON
Nicholas Auwaerter, director of the F & M’s Center for Sustainable Environment, said a program dedicated to reuse and recycling unwanted students launched last year.
Staff and students volunteering as part of DIPS Don – DIPS being short for the college mascot, a diplomat – space bins in the residences around the campus so that students can leave items for donation.
The bins were placed on April 15 of this year before a moving date on May 4, said Auwaerter, and volunteers regularly collected articles, which were sorted for donation.
While the bins were placed in each location on the campus, the neighbors of F&M said that they noticed many usable items rejected near three locations affiliated to the college campus, the College Row, College Hill and James Street Housing Properties.
The data decorations given a tote at the Franklin & Marshall’s Center for Sustainable Environment in Lancaster on Wednesday May 7, 2025.
Auwaerter said that the college had placed 18 bins in the apartments of the College Row, while James Street Housing organized its own system to collect donations.
“We encourage residents to donate articles, food and school supplies used with the people we no longer need thanks to our community partnerships, who support those who need it and help reduce waste,” said College Row spokesperson, Alyssa Bauer, by email.
The DIPs give organizers to determine where the articles could be given, but Awaerter said they were working closely with the World Church Service last year to give articles to the Community Aid Thrift Store. But CWS financing reductions, commanded by President Donald Trump, mean that the non -profit organization has limited staff and can no longer facilitate donations to community aid.
Auwaerter’s sustainability center was also not immune to cuts this year; Two of its employees were dismissed in April, leaving that Auwaerter is based more on volunteers.
“We are constantly examining how we can change a program and how we can capture more articles … Determine what we can target in the future and how we can convince students to be more proactive in this … when they look at things at the last minute … they have to get rid of,” said Auwaerter.
The major problem for students is timing, said Auwaerter. With the final examinations and a short break to move, he said that there was simply not enough time for students to plan what to do with unwanted items, but always usable, such as shelves, household appliances and clothing.
Awaerter said that the sustainability center creates a new space in its building, the Give and Take of the square, known as Gatr, which will be open all year to accept and rehomme clothes, furniture and other donations.
Elias Mitchell, a second -year student student from the Center for Sustainable Environment, said that emails had been sent to students and panels published on campus informing them about drops in declines and teacher sustainability.
DIPS Donate was “a huge success,” said Mitchell of a small room which will soon be nicknamed the Gatr. “We have so many things, so many clothes, so many articles from everyone.”
The decorations of rooms and the furniture given fill a room at the Franklin & Marshall’s Center for Sustainable Environment in Lancaster on Wednesday May 7, 2025.
Empty and run
The neighbors of F&M declared that the school should bring back the annual sale of the dumping ground and the race, which was organized by the college From 2005 Until 2017, According to LNP | Lancasteronline archives.
The sale has collected enough used furniture, food and other essential elements of the dormitory in the college Mayser gymnasium so as not to $ 3,600 In 2016which was given to a public school mentoring program and an emergency fund for its own students faced with unexpected financial difficulties.
Several factors have contributed to the disappearance of the Dump and Run program, including a change in location necessary by F&M’s decision to transmit graduation in Mayser Gymnasium, said Auwaerter.
Sonja Crafts, who lives on Frederick Street to a few houses in college, said that Dump and Run was an effective way to manage students’ flows.
The heaps of given clothing fill tables at the Franklin & Marshall’s Center for Sustainable Environment in Lancaster on Wednesday May 7, 2025.
“If the college really does not have the ability to do it … I know very well, there would be so many volunteers from the community,” said Crafts.
Crafts directs the Reynolds Middle School Parent Teacher Organization, which, according to her, could be involved in the organization of another dumping and sale. The product, she suggested, could go towards an excursion for middle school students.
Jessica Compa-Lewis, who lives on Mary Street, said that she and her two daughters bought and volunteered during the sale when she was active. The parent of an F&M graduate in 2022, Com-Lewis said that relaunching it “would be so beneficial, especially because we live in a community that needs so much.”
And although she recognized the time pressures on students in the last weeks of the spring semester, Com-Lewis said that it was not too much to ask them to separate the articles according to what should be ransacked and what can be given.
“What it feels to me as a person who lives in the East neighborhood, you don’t care because you are going,” she said.
In the meantime, students continue to fill skip skills with perfectly usable stuff, which has prompted university neighbors to take matters into their own hands, to search for dumpster objects or to give to those who need them, said Com-Lewis.
“It doesn’t feel good to look through a garbage dumpster,” said Com-Lewis. “But if you need it and you could score hundreds of dollars of things your children may need, then you will do it.”
Diving with garbage dump, however, is prohibited on campus.
Auwaerter said that staff and the public are not allowed to recover articles from garbage skips because desirable items could be mixed with dangers such as glass or something clear, posing a safety risk.
“We appreciate our relationship with our neighbors, but we are anxious to recover the articles thrown from the containers, which puts their safety and their well-being in danger,” said the spokesperson for F&M, Pete Durantine by e-mail.
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