Maxc Santana bounced around the small room, folding pants, lining up pairs of shoes and straightening racks of clothing. It was a damp, dreary Saturday afternoon in early December, close to the end of the semester at University of Lynchburg. But there were signs of activity here.
When he was finished tidying the room, Santana brought a handful of pink velvet hangers over to a hook on the wall. There were nine. “That’s how many items were taken since this morning,” he said.
Santana is one of about 20 students at the small private school in Lynchburg who volunteer regularly at Dell Thrift and Pantry, a free clothing store and food pantry. Twice a day, the volunteers visit a cozy repurposed office space in Hundley Hall to organize clothing racks, arrange displays of nonperishable food items and take notes on the items that have been taken from the space.
Volunteers have spent more than 175 hours working on the space since Dell Thrift and Pantry launched. “They’ve helped keep the space together, in shape, and keep the energy flowing forward,” said Cory Schutter, coordinator for the university’s Center for Community Engagement.
The free store, named after the grassy center of campus, opened in September. It offers transgender and nonbinary students a safe space to find clothing that fits their identity, but it’s open 24/7 for all students, faculty and staff looking for something to wear or to eat. It also offers free binders, undergarments for transmasculine people that can easily cost between $30 and $60.
The space was born out of a submission to the school’s Innovation Collaborative, which solicits ideas to benefit the campus of about 1,800 undergraduate students. Some of the submissions are rewarded with startup money.
Dell Thrift and Pantry got $1,600 in startup funds and space for the small shop. The university also provides a second space for students to sort and store donations, which are gathered from bins in dorm laundry rooms and other spots around campus.
The Lynchburg Environmental Sustainability Society, one of the biggest clubs on campus, has had a hand in launching and running the shop, along with students completing volunteer hours as part of the Bonner Leader Program.
Though the thrift and pantry is set up to foster private, discreet shopping, visitors are invited to mark their visit on a bulletin board. But the number of self-reported visits is far lower than estimated use based on a door tracker that logs entrances and exits. The volunteers also measure clothing weight to track how quickly donated clothing is taken away. In the first full week the thrift was up and running in September, 53 pounds of clothing were taken from the racks and 38 people reported visiting the food pantry.
The food pantry area is typically stocked with shopping bags from the campus bookstore. “Some people might not feel comfortable carrying a grocery bag if they’re taking food,” Santana said. By using plastic bookstore bags, a visitor can choose to keep what they take with them private, whether it’s a can of soup, a bag of rice, menstrual products or a jar of vitamins.
Santana explained that the food pantry receives a big batch of donations about once a month, courtesy of the Park View Community Mission and the Blue Ridge Area Food Bank. Those incoming donations are split between Dell Thrift and the spiritual life center on the other side of campus, so students have options in more than one location.
Dell Thrift and Pantry volunteers restock the pantry about once a week, but daily volunteers log what’s taken each day to note what’s popular at various times of day or week and to help plan the restocking schedule. A clipboard sits atop a minifridge, allowing visitors to record requests. On a recent day, the requests ranged from gluten-free snacks to boxes of facial tissues.
The food pantry is an even smaller room tucked inside the Dell Thrift space. Signs posted ask visitors not to try on clothes there.
“The last thing we would want is for the door to be locked” because someone’s trying on clothing when another visitor is trying to access the pantry, Santana explained. Instead, people can try on clothing in one of two gender-neutral restrooms nearby. They can also take items with them, try them on at home, and re-donate anything that doesn’t fit.
A few weeks after it opened, Dell Thrift and Pantry launched its binder fund. A binder is a stretchy undergarment that compresses the chest, and it can help a nonbinary or transmasculine person feel more confident about their appearance. Students can scan a QR code on a bulletin board in Dell Thrift to access a brief form asking for size and style information, and then request to have a binder delivered to their campus mailbox for free.
“Binders are an important garment for people, and it’s important to have [them] new,” said Schutter, who fills the orders via online shop GC2b. Offering them via Dell Thrift contributes to the balance of items available in the free store, as clothing donations tend to offer more feminine styles than masculine ones.
Santana, who is transgender, stressed the importance of purchasing a binder that’s designed for all-day wear. Cheap ones have closures on the side, he explained, which over time can affect the wearer’s posture. Better quality binders pull over the head like a tank top.
A sophomore student at the university said they’ve received two binders that would have cost about $50 each through the fund. They had purchased a binder on their own before learning about the fund but said the $17 option they bought online was too big, itchy and “terrible.”
The student, who said they started going through a gender transition over the summer, asked to be anonymous because their family doesn’t know about it. “They know me as female,” the student said. They now identify as a mix of nonbinary and masculine, and said, “It feels more freeing, to actually be myself, to not have to dress up in a certain way for people.”
But the student doesn’t have a lot of money, and they don’t drive. That can make acquiring a new wardrobe challenging — especially, they said, because their weight can fluctuate.
“If I didn’t have Dell Thrift … I don’t really have another option,” they said. At the campus shop, they’ve been able to pick out clothes that are more masculine and try them on to figure out which styles and sizes feel right. “I’ve gotten so many flannels. I’m a sucker for flannel,” they said.
They’ve also been able to find men’s dress pants and jeans that fit, even though the men’s clothing section at Dell Thrift is smaller. They’ve donated much of their “more girly” clothing to the project.
Schutter said the team is “constantly” receiving and sorting donations to meet demand. Dell Thrift and Pantry saw an average of 136 visits weekly based on the door tracker mechanism. Visitors have taken at least 325 pounds of clothing since September. And eight orders have come in for the binder fund so far. A donor paid for the first order of three or four garments, with the rest coming from the remaining innovation grant money.
Shutter plans to work with the students to streamline operations behind the scenes in the spring semester and hopes to offer an auxiliary food pantry that would be available by appointment to assist a greater volume of students.
Similar concepts exist at colleges from Massachusetts to North Dakota. Randolph-Macon College in Ashland operates the Hull Closet, which offers food, toiletries and clothing to students along with a similar binder-ordering system. Students don’t have to prove they’re in need to use the space, but they must make an appointment.
Beyond helping college students meet their basic needs, free stores like Dell Thrift and the Hull Closet can signal to prospective students that a school is inclusive and welcoming of the LGBTQ+ community.
Dell Thrift wasn’t started because there’s an unusually large LGBTQ+ community at the University of Lynchburg, though it does offer clubs including a Gender and Sexuality Alliance and a queer spirituality discussion group, and it offers gender-inclusive housing. Rather, the thrift and pantry is intended to broaden accessibility for all students, Schutter said.
The anonymous student said they consider University of Lynchburg to be open and accepting to the LGBTQ+ community. “There are people on campus that do judge, but that happens everywhere,” they said.
They said that knowing that many of the people who work on Dell Thrift are LGBTQ+ is “part of why it’s so welcoming.”