The spring 2024 OzThrift Sale, organized by the Sustainability Office, took place on the first weekend of the semester from Jan. 25 to 27. $5 Fill-A-Bag Day closed out the event on Jan. 27.
The sale was in a new location, calling Lounge 1C of the Mackin Complex on East Campus home for three days. Items on sale come from end-of-semester donations as resident students move out of their rooms, and this endeavor raises funds to support the office’s programs.
Over the past few years, the complex’s zig-zag mid-century architecture has been used most notably as resident student quarantine and isolation during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. Notably, both of the Mackin Complex’s residence halls, Lonis and Moreland Halls, in addition to Funnelle Hall on Central Campus, were being used in the quarantine effort. The office of Residence Life and Housing does not currently advertise Lonis or Moreland on its website for on-campus living, and Auxiliary Services does not currently have meal services in the Mackin dining hall.
The Mackin Complex is near the Schools of Business and Education, housed in nearby Rich, Park and Wilber Halls respectively. Currently, the future use of the complex is uncertain.
Kate Spector, director of the Sustainability Office, said that the future of the sale is uncertain.
“At least we’re not rushed to move out and pack up, but we don’t know where we’ll be next time,” Spector said.
The sale has moved around during the few years it has been hosted on campus. Past locations have included the basement level of Sheldon Hall, the ballroom of the former Hewitt Union and different places within Marano Campus Center, including Swetman Gym, the concourse level and room 133 adjacent to the auditorium.
“There’s been an awesome turnout and an impressive number of students have shown up,” Spector said.
The office’s paid student interns also noticed. “These are good crowds, and we’ve even got ‘veterans’ who show up at every sale, or even every day of every sale,” Dan, an intern with the office, said.
The motto of thrifting might just be that the next great find is out there somewhere. A cowboy hat sitting around to be picked up is “par for the course,” they say, but there were also stranger items on sale. One student even came in saying that they would see a laundry hamper available and proceed to fill it up, a creative idea for the largely popular $5 Fill-A-Bag days.
For Spector and the rest of the Sustainability team, there are not only memorable items that may have gone to waste, but there were also memorable moments that were just wholesome fun.
“It’s so interesting seeing people buying the craziest things,” Jo, another intern present at the event, said. “A guy who came in one day and bought a horse jacket had a great sense of humor, and even two people came in just to play the piano!”
The piano was one of the few things in the room shoppers could not take home. At the end of it all, Spector was proud of the sale and how the campus and the greater Oswego community has supported the event’s mission.
“OzThrift diverts 30,000 pounds of what would be waste going into landfills and incinerators. We’ve got a great volunteer force and our interns who help us out,” Spector said.
Thrifting is a sustainable alternative to the current fast fashion model brought by large corporations such as SHEIN, Fashion Nova and ASOS.
“Thrifting promotes sustainability by diverting clothing from landfills for reuse,” according to a 2023 article from the University of Colorado Boulder’s Division of Student Affairs. “With Americans throwing away over 13 million tons of clothing each year, fast fashion and overconsumption lead to excess waste in landfills, carbon emissions from textile manufacturing and depletion of resouces.”
