h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

One guideline that most students follow is a fairly simple one: If you don't use it, chuck it. Storage locker space and room in your car on the journey home is just too precious to waste on things that you just don't use. You can use this to your advantage. Often, these unwanted things get left in the halls in the hopes that someone else will find them useful. Lamps, articles of clothing and jewelery, laundry soap, sketch pads, various textbooks and other school supplies, and even a computer that only needed a $30 part to work as good as new again has been aqquired through end-of-the-year "dumpster diving". If the person still seems to be in residence, though, just knock on the door and ask if they mean to give whatever item it is outside of their door away. Communal areas (like laundry rooms and lounges) get piles of useful things, too.