This fall, NYU Abu Dhabi welcomed its largest class ever. Well before their arrival on campus and amid the excitement around the first in-person Marhaba since 2019, the incoming first years were faced with an atypical request from the administration: to purchase their bed linen through a shared order form or bring their own set of bedsheets. The request was unexpected because, until this year, bedsheets, hangers and laundry baskets were a part of the welcome package provided to each incoming student.

Having a set of bedsheets and towels is a starting point but making oneself feel at home on campus takes much more than this. Often, students decorate their rooms with posters, flowers, floor rugs and extra furniture, and use fairy lights and speakers to create ambiance. While some campus residents bring decorations from their homes, there is a limit to how much students traveling from abroad can fit in their luggage.

An easier solution is buying furniture and decorations from IKEA or other stores in downtown Abu Dhabi. However, making these purchases upon arrival to Abu Dhabi requires having some disposable cash at hand and it is a privilege that many incoming students cannot afford. Similarly, in the case of bedsheets, students are now faced with an option of bringing a set from home or buying one upon arrival in Abu Dhabi. Fortunately, there is a third way to deal with the pain of getting items necessary for living on campus.

The decision not to provide bedsheets for incoming students is an important issue that warrants further discussion and advocacy, given that it was implemented without any consultation with the student body, but it is also a nudge for the community to think about how we can make better use of the resources that we already have. After all, there have already been nine classes that graduated from NYUAD and each person collected a little treasure over the course of their four years on campus.

While some students take their items back home after graduating and others hand their property over to continuing students, every year there are heaps of equipment and appliances that get thrown away. Many of these items — anything from flower pots and paintings to toasters and vacuum cleaners — are in good shape and could serve many more generations.

Anyone who had to stay on campus beyond the summer departure day is aware just how cluttered floor lounges get with abandoned and unwanted properties of students. Lounges are by no means meant to serve this purpose and reminding students not to drop off their belongings in common spaces before leaving is a perennial headache for the Residential Education team. It is clear that having a functioning system for recirculating furniture and other home items would help to resolve this problem as well.

The culture of reusing and recirculating items already exists to some extent, with students sometimes giving each other items that they no longer want or have nowhere to keep over the summer. As of now, one of the major obstacles for keeping items, especially large ones, between semesters is the lack of storage space. Current storage lockers allow students to keep their bedsheets and a few more things but there is only so much one can fit within roughly one cubic meter of storage. In particular, few are willing to use up their storage for items that they would give away after the summer and there is no space at all for graduating seniors that would like to leave their items to be picked up by the first years.

In the past, the Student Government Sustainability Committee and Student Interest Group Ecoherence tried to establish similar initiatives but they ran into several issues, such as the unavailability of storage space and struggle in finding manpower to manage the program. Then, the pandemic put this initiative on hold. Finally, last semester, the Sustainability Committee made initial strides towards securing space for the recirculation center and sorting through necessary logistical arrangements. This semester, the committee will continue to work on this idea with the hope of having the program ready by the end of the academic year.

Having a transient and incredibly mobile student population at NYUAD means that many everyday life items are bought and thrown away, but it does not have to be this way. Establishing the recirculation center would be a step forward in strengthening the culture of sustainability and environmental stewardship on campus and would also provide more equitable access to room equipment in times when access to disposable cash cannot be taken for granted.