After final exams and graduation every spring, America's college campuses become astonishing junkyards of abandoned stuff -- providing, some say, a snapshot of a generation of students raised in a throwaway culture.
Take Pomona College. A cleanup of the dormitories there last week filled hallways and lounges with about 50 unwanted mini-refrigerators, 40 computer printers, scores of microwave ovens and window fans, mounds of mattresses and couches, piles of pillows and clothes, a store's worth of detergent, shampoo, books and ramen, not to mention some bicycles, stuffed animals, crutches and exotic underwear.
At that liberal arts college in Claremont and at schools across the country, graduating seniors and even underclassmen lack the time, storage space, wits or desire to keep all their possessions. So they leave some -- even items in good condition -- behind. That is particularly true for the students headed home to faraway locales or for those whose parents will sigh in exasperation but will finance another clock radio and bookcase in the fall.
"I think it's absolutely enormous. But it's not surprising," Sarah Kuriakose, Pomona's former student body president, said while surveying the detritus gathered from a room-to-room search she organized. "No college student would say it's surprising."
But she and activists at many other campuses, including USC, UCLA and UC Irvine, have decided enough is enough. Concerned about the waste and overstuffed landfills, they are devising ways to donate or recycle the dorm debris.
Some schools, such as Pennsylvania State and Ohio State, conduct immense yard sales and give the proceeds to worthy causes.
"Not until you are here sorting through it all do you realize the actual magnitude of what was previously being trashed. And what could be put to good use for families of need," said recent Pomona graduate Katie Lenhoff.
She was among the 24 volunteers working on a new weeklong effort called Operation Clean Sweep, which funneled the discards to six charities.
But first there was cleaning and sorting to do. In Walker Hall, Lenhoff, for example, was washing wine glasses with tell-tale red stains still at their bottoms.
That time of the year
Norbert Dunkel, vice president of the Assn. of College and University Housing Officers-International, said the widespread abandonment of property has become a springtime ritual at many schools.
