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College Marketplace is the student-only buy and sell app for Western Illinois University in Macomb, Illinois. Every account is verified with a @wiu.edu email address, so you're only ever trading with other Leathernecks — not strangers from Facebook Marketplace or Craigslist.

WIU's on-campus housing is compact and easy to learn. First-year students live together on the First Year Experience floors of Thompson Hall, the largest hall on campus at roughly 1,000 residents, with its own dining center, convenience store, and 24-hour computer lab. Once you have credits behind you the upper-division buildings open up: Corbin-Olson Halls, renovated in 2012 and offering singles, doubles, super-doubles, and a limited number of suite-style rooms for about 800 students, and Caroline Grote Hall, a smaller suite-style building of roughly 150 students with carpeted rooms and a common space with a TV, pool, foosball, and Ping-Pong. Undergraduates are required to live on campus for four semesters or until they reach at least 60 credit hours, so almost everyone cycles through these three buildings — and cycles their furniture with them. Western students post mini fridges, futons, storage bins, desk lamps, monitors, bikes, and gently used textbooks every semester, usually for a fraction of retail.

Know what you're buying before you buy it. Rooms come with a loftable bed frame, a desk with a pedestal, a dresser, and a desk chair; Grote adds a hutch and Corbin-Olson adds wardrobes. Mattresses are 80 inches long, so buy extra-long twin sheets — a standard twin set will not fit. The hall furniture itself lofts (plan on a rubber mallet and a friend), separate bed lofts are not permitted, cinder blocks are prohibited, and bed risers are allowed instead. There are about nine inches of clearance under a bed frame at standard height, which is why low-profile under-bed bins move fast. Refrigerators are capped at 4.6 cubic feet and must be Energy Star rated, microwaves have to be under 700 watts, and toasters, toaster ovens, hot pots, hot plates, and countertop grills are banned outright. Corbin-Olson rooms have no carpet, so area rugs are a perennial listing.

Meet up somewhere public and busy. The University Union is the obvious handoff spot, with the bookstore and food court right there, and the Leslie F. Malpass Library, the Spencer Student Recreation Center, the Thompson Dining Center, and the Corbin-Olson Dining Center all work in daylight with people around. No shipping labels, no delivery fees, no meeting someone off campus.

Popular categories at Western Illinois: textbooks and course materials · dorm furniture and futons · mini fridges and microwaves · bikes and scooters · Leatherneck apparel and game day gear · electronics and monitors · event tickets · bed risers and under-bed storage · area rugs and Twin XL bedding