McCollum Hall won’t be around another semester, but its furniture will live on in other places.

Hundreds of beds, desks, chairs and couches from the large residence hall, 1800 Engel Road, are being donated to several different organizations with a need for them, KU’s Center for Sustainability announced this week.

In connection with KU’s annual student-move-out collection and donation effort, KU Student Housing donated the following from McCollum:

• More than 130 pieces of lounge furniture and about 400 carpet squares to Sterling College, a small private college just outside Hutchinson.

• More than 500 bed sets and study chairs to My Father’s House, which provides transitional housing for rural homeless in Kansas.

• More than 100 desk sets to Habitat for Humanity of Topeka and Kids International, an early-childhood education center.

• More than 500 mattresses to Sleepyhead Beds, which will sanitize and distribute them to Kansas City area children who don’t have a comfortable place to sleep.

McCollum will be razed on a yet-to-be-determined date this fall, and two new residence halls that will take its place on Daisy Hill will open in time for the fall semester.

KU Surplus also collected huge amounts of food, clothing and household items from on-campus housing during the May moveout rush.

Kim Criner, education and outreach coordinator for the Center for Sustainability, said a lot of dorm-room items won’t be needed in the students’ next phase of life.

Or they simply don’t want to bother packing and moving things.

Think room decor, nonperishable packaged food items, mini-fridges, small appliances, clothing and bedding sized for dorm-room bunks.

Bins are set up at residence halls to collect unwanted items as students are moving out, Criner said. Then KU coordinates with groups to donate items on a large scale.

“We do know that without providing the proper streams for delivering these items, that they would just end up in the garbage,” she said.

Here, according to the KU Center for Sustainability, is where some of those items went:

• 1,200 pounds of food to Just Food.

• 4,600 pounds of clothing to the Sustainability Action Network, which in turn sold items to benefit the Lawrence Creates Makerspace, a community center providing workshops and training for artists and hobbyists.

• 6,725 pounds of clothing to Planet Aid-Kansas City, which provides clothing and shoes to nonprofit organizations in Kansas and Missouri.

More information on disposing of furniture, electronic waste and other items on the KU campus can be found online at surplus.ku.edu.

Criner said Sterling College also got some furniture last year from Jayhawker Towers apartments, prior to renovations there.

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