MANSFIELD, PA—After the semester ended and students cleared out their rooms in the residences halls and headed home for the summer, Resident Assistants in
Mansfield University’s Department of Housing, Dining, and Campus Life went to work on “Reassess Your Mess,” a massive donation drive, to benefit on-campus resources for students in need and My Neighbor’s Closet, Mansfield’s only locally-owned non-profit thrift store.
Every year, as MU students leave the residence halls for the summer, their departure is evident, not only due to the car-less parking lots, quieter campus, and empty classrooms, but for the immense amounts of discarded items gathered around the on-campus dumpsters.
In response to the overwhelming number of usable items that would otherwise be thrown away, staff members in Residence Life have worked for the past several years to coordinate donation drives. This was the second year of the “Reassess Your Mess” program which began last year under the direction of former Sycamore Hall Residence Director Ben Auger.
This year’s “Reassess Your Mess” program collected old textbooks, non-perishable food, clothing, shoes, household items, cleaning supplies, furniture, and other items, in larger quantities than in previous years.
The program collected more than four large boxes of textbooks, which were donated to Project Textbook, an on-campus initiative to provide textbooks to students who would not otherwise be able to afford them.
Additionally, two large moving carts full of non-perishable food items were donated to the new on-campus food pantry, a recent effort to provide food items to students who are food insecure. An additional moving cart full of cleaning supplies and paper products was also donated to the on-campus food pantry.
The bulk of the donations were given to My Neighbor’s
Closet, a non-profit thrift store in Mansfield. My Neighbor’s Closet, a subsidiary of Partners in Progress, works to provide job training skills to individuals with disabilities in order to help prepare them for careers in retail settings. My Neighbor’s Closet was specifically chosen by “Reassess Your Mess” coordinators because of the immense benefits they provide to the greater Mansfield community, as well as the important work they do. My Neighbor’s Closet received dozens of full bags of clothing, multiple boxes of household items, several boxes of shoes, and various furniture items donated by Mansfield students—totaling more than seven vanloads of donated items.
Sorting and moving the donations took several days, and the effort of multiple Residence Life Staff members including Corrine Shaffer, Brooke Cervoni, Katie Christman, Heaven Cole, Sam Masher, Shakim Blackwell, Erin Carrigan, Ally Woodley, Brandon Yost, Taylor Donahue and Austin Boroch. The “Reassess Your Mess” team also benefitted immensely from the supervision and support of professional staff members including Dusty Zeyn, Mike Stamp and Frank Crofchick. The drive would also not have been possible without the help of the My Neighbor’s Closet staff.
For more information about Residence Life at MU, go to mansfield.edu/residence-life/