Students pack up their rooms and face a familiar dilemma every spring, but ReUse-a-Palooza has offered a solution for over 20 years.
Donation boxes in the residence hall lobbies across campus fill up with everything from clothing to household items. Organizers are sounding the alarm: they need more faculty and staff volunteers to help sort it all.
"We've collected lots of food that's absolutely still good," said Kerry Strayer, a communication professor and one of the program's co-founders. "We'd much rather collect what students leave and use it than have it go to a dumpster."
The program started more than two decades ago when Strayer and psychology professor Michelle Acker were walking through campus during move-out season and noticed students tossing perfectly good items into dumpsters. The two began recovering what they could. What started as an informal rescue effort expanded into a campus tradition, which was originally called the "Dumpster Dive."
Donated items are distributed to several organizations, such as the Promise House, where unspoiled food goes, and the Otterbein Thrift Shop, which is where clothing and shoes are sent. Items that don't find a home with those partners may go to Volunteers of America, or this year, to the Community Refugee and Immigration Services, which needs dishes and utensils for newly arrived immigrant families.
The program has also quietly become something of an informal community store. Donated items are displayed behind the library, where anyone on campus can browse and take what they need.
"Virtually everything that is reusable gets reused," Strayer said. "We're a campus known for volunteers, and this is just another great example of that."
This year, donation boxes are available not just in residence hall lobbies, but also at fraternity and sorority houses, which is a first for the program. ReUse-a-Palooza officially runs during finals week, when students finish exams, head home, and leave behind whatever they could not take with them.
Volunteering begins in mid-April, and people who sign up get the first pick of donated items.
