Leadership Section

Have you ever heard the phrase, “dress for success?” It usually relates to someone trying to dress up for an event, job interview, or special occasion. On college campuses all across the world, but specifically here at the University of South Carolina, students lack the means necessary to “dress for success.” About five years ago, in an effort to assist those students in need, USC’s Student Government created a resource called the Carolina Closet. This closet was created to provide students on USC’s campus with access to free business casual and business professional clothing. In my Key Insight Ripples of Change, I talk about how as teachers, we teach beyond the content to empower our students to be good people. This idea of teaching beyond the content becomes very evident in USC’s support for the Carolina Closet. As a university, the administration understands that once you get your degree, there is still a level of professionalism that people have to display to be considered for a job. Part of the professionalism is business clothing. It is really fulfilling to see the concept of teaching beyond the content that I learned in EDPY 401 be implemented on a university level through the Carolina Closet.

Now all of this sounds amazing and like a great concept, but when I accepted the role as the Assistant Director of the Carolina Closet back in March of 2022, I was in for a rude awakening. This role is completely volunteer, and I started it because I wanted a way to serve the USC community that has become so special to me over three years. This resource that is advertised as a place where students can get clothes to dress for success was barely operational. I walked into broken shelves and overflowing boxes all over the floor; I opened an email account that had not been checked in three years; I emailed volunteers who said they had never been contacted about working the space. This left me genuinely shocked that the university could advertise a resource that was lacking any structure. Why is structure a problem? Because without structure, the Carolina Closet could not be open, and students still lacked the means to dress for success. Now, this problem has become personal. I was the Assistant Director who was tasked with bringing the resource back to life. My next step was to research the way the space had been operationalized in years passed and see what positive and negative components I could discover. Through my research I found a big problem. The way the space had been operating was not sustainable. There was no consistent way to train volunteers or gain donations to keep the closet stocked with clothes.

I spent my first two months as the Assistant Director renovating the space, moving locations, and trying to just physically open the doors. I worked for those two months as much as I could to prepare the space to be open in the fall for students. Throughout the summer, I joined meetings about the creation of a basic needs hub on USC’s campus. This resource would be a place for all of the Gamecock community to serve each other. After months of figuring out the logistics the best we knew how, we opened the Gamecock CommUNITY Shop after Labor Day. With the excitement around this new resource, the responsibilities of this role increased. As the responsibilities were increasing and because of some unforeseen circumstances, I had to step into the director role. This meant for a period of time I was doing two jobs while also trying to find someone to fill the assistant director role. Even after finding help, the task of opening the closet all day seemed too big. As a full-time student, it is quite impossible to be at the closet eight hours a day, the length of time it needs to be open to be most accessible for students. Thinking about how to make what seems like an impossible task possible is where I am now, still struggling to have an operational closet with reliable volunteers and a consistent inventory.

So, what is next? How can I create a solution to further sustain and develop how the Carolina Closet operates? My proposed idea is to increase community involvement. To solve the problem of lacking inventory, I need to reach out and create partnerships with local businesses who want to serve others. Involving local businesses from within the community will help bridge the gap between the college environment in Columbia and the people who live there permanently. A few ways to create partnerships is through using the connections I have made my four years at USC to realize who I might know who could connect me to a local business who would be interested in donating to local students. After collecting the information about possible partnerships, I would reach out by email or phone to talk through logistically if their business would be interested and what they could offer. Once we create these partnerships, we can have donation drives throughout the city of Columbia or have a consistent flow of clothing from overstock in stores. As far as creating a model for a more consistent volunteer staff, I need to reach a wider span of the current Gamecock community. Currently, the knowledge of the Carolina Closet as a resource for college students is extremely low, but the knowledge that you can volunteer at the closet is even lower. Almost every student organization on USC’s campus requires some type of a service component. By reaching out and informing organizations of our resource and that we have volunteer opportunities could drastically improve the reliability of our volunteer base. I also would love to propose an idea that we unify all the volunteers in the CommUNITY shop. That way each resource within the shop does not have to find and train each individual volunteer. If I could create a unified model for holistically training volunteers for the entire shop, that would eliminate the struggle of not having people with previous knowledge and experience.