Free stuff

Here's a list of stuff that your parents or someone else already paid for (alphabetized).

Office Services and Supplies

  • Color printing: Jesup
  • Printing: Computer labs in Schow, Sawyer, Jesup, Bronfman, Clark, '62 CTD, Stetson, Goodrich, and numerous other places.
  • Paper cutter: Schow photocopy room
  • Pencils: OCC
  • Scanning, DVD burning, poster printing, video copying and editing, and any other multimedia needs: Jesup Media Studio. We provide the equipment and technical assistance; you have to do the work and provide media (like DVDs, tapes, and photo paper) yourself.
  • Staplers: OCC (underneath Stetson); anyone visiting gets a free stapler
  • Staples: Sawyer Circulation Desk, Schow
  • Computer classes: OIT has classes from time to time. You can request particular classes.

Paper and Ink

  • Textbooks/other books! Every beginning of semester, especially the fall, check out the free books table in the 1914 Library. Even students not on financial aid can get free books this way (although only students on financial aid can formally borrow from the 1914 Library). What's that? Your prof says you need the latest edition of this particular translation of Plato, even though it's gone through millenia of perfectly competent translations? Baloney. Hit the 1914.
  • Victoria's Secret (and other) catalogs: Mail trailer next to Lehman
  • The Wall Street Journal: Hopkins, the mail trailer
  • The New York Times: Mission, Goodrich
  • Old course packets: Easy to find at the end of the semester near recycling bins - you can often score the readings for that class you wanted to take but didn't have time. If you look hard enough around Stetson (below the level b/level d stairwell is a good bet), you can often find a few random packets.

Food

  • Paresky Center: If there is ever any food lying around on the tables right by the entrance to the building, it's free! Take it, eat it all, it's there because people didn't want it to go to waste.
  • Super Stressbusters on Mondays of finals week each semester.
  • Grab n' Go will always put their leftover desserts on the table downstairs next to the Paresky Auditorium
  • Candy: Dean's office, registrar, and OCC.
  • Coffee: Between 3:25 PM and 3:30 PM (or when they run out), coffee is free at the Eco Cafe.
  • Berries and vegetables: when in season in the Forest Garden, between Stetson and CES.
  • Physics common room: After colloquia but before students show up to work on problem sets. Tuesday and Friday at 3:30. Also has hot chocolate packets and hot water, but leave some change every so often to keep the golden goose laying.
  • Monday at 10:00, Computer Science Snacks, which you can really make a dinner out of if you try.
  • Wednesday 6:30 PM, JRC: Dinner discussion (or movie)
  • Wednesday 9-10 PM, BioSnacks in the biology building lobby, hosted by the Biology Majors Advisory Committee (BMAC)!
  • Friday, 7 PM, JRC: Shabbat dinner
  • Cookies, soda, and juice following Math colloquia in Bronfman 106
  • Dinner: First Monday of the month, Math-Stats dinner at the dining hall, free even without a meal plan if you walk in with a professor

Software

See The Free Software Foundation or The Open Source Initiative for the why. Open Source Mac maintains a list of superb free software and open source software for Macs. SourceForge.net provides all of the open source PC software you can think of.

Linux is not only free as in speech and free as in beer, it's free as in takes-up-all-your-free-time.

Miscellaneous

  • Condoms: the health center and Peer Health in upper Paresky
  • Light Bulbs - B&G, just ask your custodian, and they'll supply incandescent replacement bulbs.
  • Log Cabin - free for any Williams Outing Club members to reserve for one night.
  • Massages - ACE Stressbusters: Wednesday night, from 7-9pm, come at 6:45pm to sign up, hot chocolate, coffee, tea and as soon as the Goodrich coffee bar gets their stuff together, cookies, will also be provided for free.
  • Media equipment (Cameras, external hard drives, camcorders and more) for rental: There's an equipment rental room on the second floor of Sawyer that will give you pretty much everything.
  • Movies (VHS and DVD) and music CDs can be borrowed for free from the Williamstown Public Library located across the street from the Williamstown Inn. Bring your student ID and get a library card.
  • Paper towels and liquid soap: a bathroom near you
  • Cross-country skis, sleds, snowshoes, sleeping bags, etc., can be borrowed for free from the WOC Equipment Room if you have a Williams Outing Club membership card. You can join for $10--equipment borrowing is unlimited. The equipment room is located downstairs in Paresky.
  • Squash rackets and basketballs (and probably other equipment) can be borrowed from the Equipment Room in Lasell/Chandler.