Mission Driven
Ask many college students where they shop, and you’re likely to hear, “Shop? I thrift!” Thrift shops have always been a cost-effective way for budget-constrained college students to acquire new threads and apartment furnishings. But in an era that prioritizes minimal environmental impacts and high sustainability, thrifting is enjoying new popularity.
This trend was clear to Associate Dean of Students David DeAngelis, who saw the potential of a student-led campus thrift store as an experiential learning opportunity to teach students everything about a retail operation, from management and inventory control to marketing.
Student Government Association members Amanda Fagan, Class of 2026, and Abigail Morin, Class of 2027, stepped forward to manage the new effort. They began by collecting donated clothes and housewares from students leaving campus last spring and toured local thrift stores with DeAngelis to get ideas on pricing, displays, and overall organization for their relatively small space. In October, Thrift-o-RAMa opened for business in the Sawyer Building.
“Things are so expensive in Boston, so the idea was to be a place where students can swing by, and we’ll have anything they need for a dorm or starting out in an apartment,” says Fagan. One crucial part of the system? Thrift-o-RAMa uses bartering, rather than cash, as a means of payment. Students can donate their own unneeded items to earn credit at the store—a novel feature among thrift stores.
“We don’t want students to have to pay out of pocket,” Morin says. “We also want to keep inventory flowing and fresh.”
The intense, learn-on-the-job nature of opening a new venture was a valuable crash course in retail operations for the student-managers—and a bonus for their résumés. “Figuring out work hours with student schedules, especially work-study hours, has been the biggest challenge, because we aim to be open between 10 a.m. and 4 p.m. when students are here,” says Morin.
Thrift-o-RAMa is now well-stocked with all sorts of clothing, including cold-weather gear like coats and gloves, which are popular with international students who find their first Boston winter a shocker.
Donations continue to be brisk as the word spreads to Suffolk faculty and staff, and the store expects another bumper move-out season in May. (The oddest left-behind item to date? A hurley—a curved wooden stick used in Irish sports.) In recent months, the store had enough excess inventory to send ten boxes of gear and housing supplies to California residents impacted by the January wildfires.
“It’s exciting to see sophomores and juniors literally running all aspects of a business,” says DeAngelis. “It is a tremendous learning experience for them.”
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spring 2025
By Erica Noonan
Junior Amanda Fagan (left) and sophomore Abigail Morin (right) got a crash course in retail management when they helped open Thrift-o-RAMa, a student-run thrift store located in the Sawyer Building. Photograph by Michael J. Clarke
