The Chamberlain Student Center is allowing students to rent items for free to experience and use items they may be interested in.

The Student Center offered items such as a basketball, checkers set, spikeball kit, football, and competition flying disc.

There were also other items for students to use as resources for whether they live on campus or off-campus to see what can help their lifestyle. Those items consist of a massage gun, handheld steamer, tool kit, graphing calculator, bicycle pump, portable charger with built-in cables, and a cordless stick vacuum cleaner with a battery. This will give students the opportunity to see what they might be interested in and the resources that people can use for their households.

As students move into college, especially incoming freshmen and transfer students, they may look to get involved in clubs to find a way to keep themselves occupied.

This initiative was in an effort to provide another way for students to make new friends on campus through what they have in common with each other. The items are also free of cost as a way to give students a chance to use items for a short period, saving them a couple of bucks.

Joe Lizza, director of the Chamberlain Student Center and campus activities, believed this could aid students in finding a new hobby. 

“It allows students to either rent items that they may not have a need for all the time,” Lizza said. “We hope that it’s a service to students as individuals but also some of the activities and some of the games kinda can build some campus community.”

A couple of students did not get the opportunity to rent any of the free items in the Student Center but they did check it out, including graduate student Matea Graysegers, and senior Charlotte Carlies.

“It’s nice to see that there’s a variety of things in here from sports and stuff that we can use in our dorms,” Graysegers said. “I have looked at the speaker a few times so that really caught my eye, but there are definitely a few things that I would come and look at again.”

The idea is to get the attention of students to check it out and see what could help them.

“The thing I liked most about this was the location,” Carlies said. “I feel like I walked by it multiple times. I liked that it was convenient for students who ride their bikes. They have basketballs which is what I do and spikeball which I enjoy playing.”

The items are located by the main entrance of the Student Center, where there is a lot of traffic among students. 

Students have the opportunity to rent items by talking to the staff members who work in that particular building, specifically Lizza who knows all about it. 

“We have the control to change everything up,” Lizza said. “We can swap out items, we can put new items, we can duplicate items if they are really popular.”

For students who have rented or taken a look at some of the items that they saw in September, they might expect to see some of the same resources and some different ones that may interest people on campus.

“In addition to the box that we put out in front of the Student Center, we will also have one in the newly reopened Game Center in October,” Lizza said. 

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