A collaboration between the Occidental College Office of Sustainability, the Oxy Ecossentials club, and an economics lab course has yielded a fully student-operated thrift store and community hub on campus.
Have you noticed the array of clothing and second-hand goods on display at the concession stand next to the soccer field? If you’re looking to bring new life to pre-owned items, take a closer look and discover Oxy’s new campus thrift store, Touchdown Thrift. Oxy’s Office of Sustainability has partnered with the student club Oxy Ecossentials and Associate Professor of Economics Bevin Ashenmiller’s ECON 201: Sustainability Lab class to develop an operational model to open the store successfully year-round.
Isa Merel ’23, assistant sustainability coordinator for the Office of Sustainability, works closely with students on campus, helping them bring their ideas to fruition. “[ECON 201] is excellent because it gets students involved, and they get course credit so they have a little more skin in the game,” she says. “The students in Oxy Ecossentials are very passionate about reuse and educating about why it’s important.”
Over the years, Oxy Ecossentials has accumulated donated goods from Green Move Out on campus and needed a larger space to store them. In the past, Stearns Hall’s garage had been used for Green Move Outs pop-ups; this process was labor-intensive for students due to the temporary nature of the event, meaning lots of moving goods back-and-forth. To create a more sustainable and permanent solution, the idea for Touchdown was born, providing a dedicated space to store and sell goods year-round.
Touchdown Thrift’s mission is to “teach people the values of sustainability and different ways to reuse,” says Annabel Ewing ’26. The store exemplifies the reuse cycle through collecting donations and reselling them affordably. The mission is also expressed through the store’s location. The Oxy concession stand had been vacant for years with no active purpose, allowing the space to function as Touchdown’s home. It’s a perfect example of how to repurpose space and transform a vacant area into a sustainable community campus hub for the community.
“People are using the space like never before: we play our music on speakers while we work, and we’re working on hosting events with KOXY radio station,” Ewing says.
Touchdown Thrift is open Monday through Friday from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. and on weekends from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. The store is entirely student-run and strictly volunteer-based, emblematic of student commitment to maintaining operations. Oxy Ecossentials and ECON 201 students also participate in various meetings to discuss future events and store operations.
[I’ve learned that] if you...work alongside others, find the right type of advocates in administration, band together with all of your resources, and utilize each other to uplift everyone, you can achieve your goal. –Anna Pruyt ’27
“It’s nice to get involved in a way where you can see a difference in reducing waste and having a space for people to get things second-hand,” says Anna Pruyt ’27, a member of both Oxy Ecossentials and ECON 201. “It makes me hopeful when things seem bleak on a larger scale; it’s a reminder of what can be done within your community.”
Ewing echoed this fear relative to the world’s current environmental climate, even as the Occidental community has supported progressive efforts in combating climate change.
“When things get done in urban and environmental policy by communities, it always starts small, and Touchdown represents how communities work at this smaller level,” Pruyt says.
Operating the store has taught students the value of advocacy within your community to further personal and global pursuits.
“It’s taught me that if you advocate and work alongside others, find the right type of advocates in administration, band together with all of your resources, and utilize each other to uplift everyone, you can achieve your goal,” Pruyt adds.
Touchdown Thrift is looking to curate more campus events this semester to further its mission and shift how people think about old versus new, including workshops on upcycling old clothing. If you are interested in involvement with the thrift store, join Oxy Ecossentials or enroll in ECON 201, which is being offered again in Fall 2025.
“Or, just come hang out!” says Ewing.
