Wanton Messiness Leads to Free Use Store Closure
by J.p. Lawrence
Students at Bard College were given the equivalent of a time out before fall break, when the Free Use Store was temporarily closed due to wanton messiness and neglect.
Free Use is an initiative by the Bard Environmental Resources Department (BERD). It has provided a temporary home for used clothing, dishes and other items for at least a decade. Since the beginning of this year however, Laurie Husted, Environmental Resources Auditor, has been dissatisfied with how the student body has been treating the facility.
“Every time I came in and took a look in the last few weeks, its been pretty chaotic,” says Husted. “Just stuff all over the ground, broken stuff. People were not valuing it...they were treating it like sort of a dumping ground. I thought it needed a fresh start and a grand re-opening, as a reminder that this is a community resource that we need to take care of.”
Elon Ullman, one of three work-study students who look after the store, has been cleaning, sweeping, organizing and restocking since the store’s closure. Ullman, who has worked at the store for four years, says the difference between this year and other years was an unfortunate incident right before the Language and Thinking program.
“Usually the first glimpse that freshmen have of the Free Store, it’s perfectly clean, perfectly pristine, like basically a thrift store where they can just take anything they want,” explains Ullman, a forth-year psychology major. “And at the end of last semester, we did get it to that state.”
“Then during L&T someone broke into the Store and trashed it, just completely destroyed it,” Ullman sighs. “So the first thing that these 500 freshmen saw was a pile of trash. That was their first image of it. And that’s how they continued to treat it over the course of the semester.”
Ullman says the messier the store got, the worse students treated it. “It’s a self-perpetuating cycle,” he says, explaining that eventually the situation became untenable.
“That’s why we closed it down for a few days, so we could try and break that cycle and let people know that that is not the way the Store deserves to be treated. There are two thousand students, and only three workers. There is only so much cleaning we can do before we get jaded and pissed off.”
Husted hopes that now that the store is re-opening, she will see more community involvement - and perhaps even a sense of pride. “Maybe that’s the first step,” she says. “When people walk into the store, they should want to leave it a little bit better than they found it.” Husted will also begin employing volunteer monitors to ensure the space is not misused.
“We’ll watch it, and if it still doesn’t work out, we’ll have to think up a new plan,” adds Husted. She said she is always looking for feedback and ideas - and stressed that she has no plans to get rid of the store. “We’re an important part of the culture.”