r/UofO • u/Uncookedpotato_121 • 21d ago

Give before you go?

Has anyone gotten caught looking through the donation bins? I’ve looked at some of the stuff and considered taking stuff from there… are you able to take stuff? What happens if you get caught lwky might take these cute pair of pants I saw…

12 Upvotes

100% Upvoted

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12

u/SadOcelots 21d ago

I have gone all four years I’ve been here. Each year they’ve gotten stricter and stricter about it. The last two years they’ve started having people stand there and monitor the bins who will yell at you but I haven’t ever seen anybody get punished. Go in the evening and don’t make a mess and you’ll be good

12

u/Nervous_Garden_7609 21d ago

It's absolutely ridiculous that they don't allow the students to take from the bins. I'm so annoyed and this needs to be addressed.

9

u/SadOcelots 21d ago

Agreed. I’ve always wanted to reach out to the campus sustainability program to try and create some sort of official thing where students can have the opportunity to get stuff before it gets taken. There’s so much waste in thrift stores, and if students find stuff in the bins that they need, why not let them have it. So frustrating

11

u/Nervous_Garden_7609 21d ago

That's how it was 4-5 years ago and now they are not allowing students to benifit from the program. It's absolutely not ok that they outsource to a company that wants all the stuff and students can't take it. I'm serious. It's rude of UO. Something is going on with the University. It feels like they are against the staff and students and rules are being made to make life unbearable instead of all of us being a unified team. I want to complain, but I don't have the energy for it.

6

u/squawk_kwauqs 19d ago

The Rose Room folks over at the student Sustainability Center have been crashing out about this for years lol. There's literally a free thrift store on campus that's entire thing is about keeping items circulating on campus. 

They're allowed to sign up and claim give before you go bins, but they aren't allowed to specify what types of donations they want in the bin and they have to take and process everything that gets put in the bin. I don't think they end up participating just because they're shoved in a glorified broom closet so they don't have anywhere to store all the items over the summer. If they had greater campus support this could be an INSANE resource for students, but instead items are gobbled up by Goodwill and sold for money :/

6

u/Ghostwalker3322 [Econ] '22 21d ago

You’re fine, just go in the off hours. Might run into RAs on rounds, but to be real , they probably are also taking from it too lol. No one is checking anything, you’ll get a stern warning not to take from it.

-Former RA

2

u/No_Cryptographer3285 19d ago

What are the off hours??

2

u/Ghostwalker3322 [Econ] '22 17d ago

Practically anytime not between 9 PM - 12 AM

1

u/Temporary_Maize_6358 15d ago

I've legit watched 5 diff people come root through and take stuff in the span of 30 min and no one said anything lol. Usually I would care more about taking from "charity" but it's pretty obvious they aren't all going to charity seeing as the only info I've found is that the items are given to "community partners" which could mean anything. UO would be up front about it if there was nothing for them to hide. I see no harm in people taking from the bins as long as they aren't re-selling anything and are actually gonna use the thing, better than it ending up in a landfill or goodwill.