By JONAS LIKENS ’27 and ABIGAIL RENAUD’28
Updated 11:50 a.m. EDT, 2 Oct 2026
What happens to the furniture, textbooks, electronics and other belongings students no longer need when the semester ends? Two Houghton University (HU) students are hoping the answer can be found through a new online marketplace built specifically for college communities.
DormSweep, created by HU senior Jonas Likens and co-founded with sophomore Efrain Arellano-Onate, officially launched on Sept. 21, 2026. The platform is designed to give college students a secure way to buy and sell used goods within their own university community.
Likens is a senior at HU studying business-marketing, with minors in communication and accounting. Arellano-Onate is a sophomore majoring in accounting who also brings experience in web design, application development and coding. The founders hope their different areas of expertise will allow DormSweep to combine business strategy, communication and technology into a marketplace designed around the specific needs of college students.
The aim of this platform is to solve a problem that students face every year. “A lot of students would throw away good products and furniture, especially living in the townhouses. We wanted to create a website to post items that [people] know would sell,” said Likens.
The idea also addresses a sustainability concern on college campuses. Students frequently leave behind usable belongings when they move out, particularly at the end of the academic year. As long as items are circulated and recycled through DormSweep, landfills are less affected by the waste generated by college campuses. Less trash piles mean an uncluttered campus and cleaner Earth.
Unlike other online marketplaces, such as Facebook Marketplace, DormSweep is organized around individual colleges. Students must have a current school email address from a participating institution to access that school’s marketplace. HU students, for example, will be able to buy and sell with other members of the HU community but will not automatically have access to another university’s marketplace.
The platform will allow students to list and purchase items such as textbooks, electronics, dorm-room necessities, furniture, clothing and other used goods that still have value.
The founders say the goal is not simply to create another online marketplace, but to encourage students to reuse items while providing opportunities to save and earn money.
Safety and accountability are also central to DormSweep’s approach. The company monitors listings to help ensure that sellers accurately represent an item’s condition through descriptions and photographs. DormSweep also promotes clear and respectful communication between buyers and sellers, completed payments and safe exchanges of physical items. Not only is the goal to keep usable goods from being thrown away, but also for students to be able to connect with other students in a way that is “safe, secure, and private” according to Likens.
DormSweep is currently licensed to operate in Michigan and New York.
The founders see HU as the beginning of a larger vision: creating college-specific marketplaces where students can thrift online, earn money from items they no longer need and find affordable goods from members of their own campus community.★
