In addition to Drop, Swap, and Shop, Campus Recreation is also offering swim sessions to teach aquatic safety and help relieve students’ exam stress
KINGSTON, R.I. – Nov. 24, 2025 – The University of Rhode Island’s Campus Recreation department is officially in the giving spirit with a series of winter events aimed toward assisting and connecting with the greater URI community.
Up first is the annual Drop, Swap, and Shop clothing exchange and thrifting event, which runs from now through Dec. 10 in the lobby of the Anna Fascitelli Fitness & Wellness Center, followed by two free swim classes for students at the Tootell Aquatic Center: Ram Swim 101, a beginner’s course, debuts Dec. 3 and Stress Less, Splash More an aquatic fitness offering, is scheduled for Dec. 10 – also Reading Day at URI – as an option to help students prioritize their physical and mental well-being before the start of finals. Waivers are required for the aquatics courses; students can sign up for Ram Swim 101 online and log into IMLeagues to register for Stress Less, Splash More.
While the swim classes are currently available to students only (though there is the potential to expand these offerings to faculty and staff in the spring), Drop, Swap, and Shop is open to everyone within the URI community with participation encouraged for those who’d like to donate clothing, swap something they currently own for something new, or browse the collection for something they need.
The idea to host a clothing drive came about three years while Denise Robbin, Campus Recreation’s coordinator of fitness, health, and well-being, brainstormed with students about ways to give back to the community. With thrifting “more mainstream” than it was in the past, according to Robbin, the event became an instant success upon its launch in the fall of 2023.
Drop, Swap, and Shop is divided into three mini-events; it starts with a drop-off period from now through Dec. 6 where anyone who wants to donate can bring any clean, gently-used clothing, shoes, or accessories to the Fascitelli lobby. The swap period runs from Dec. 3 to 6, at which point anyone can exchange an item for something currently in the collection. Then, from Dec. 6 to 10, it’s time to shop, which means whatever’s left after the swap period is free to take home.
“The beauty of it is, especially this time of year, there are a lot of organizations asking for donations – food, clothing, all kinds of things – and that’s wonderful,” Robbin said, “but we purposely wanted to make this a free thrifting and exchange event.
“It really takes the stigma away from a student in need from going to a donation center or going to a place to get a free coat or going to a soup kitchen if it was food. Because it’s a thrifting and exchange event, we’ve got all sorts of students grabbing things, taking things, donating things, swapping, or just taking items.
“It’s wonderful for students in need, but it’s also the season of giving, and a lot of students maybe want to give gifts to their roommates or others in their family and really don’t have the money to buy gifts for all those people. What I love about it is it brings the donating and the needing together. We often have donation bins and we give, give, give, which is fabulous, but we never really know where it’s going or see who might be receiving it.”
The swim classes coming up in December, both coordinated by aquatics specialist Sara Mazur, are new to Campus Recreation’s aquatic offerings.
Ram Swim 101 is an hour-long, beginner-friendly swim session designed to build comfort, confidence, and control in the water. Participants will learn floating basics, breathing and timing, and the fundamentals of kicking, among other skills.
Stress Less, Splash More – a collaborative effort between Mazur and Robbin – is designed to give students a fun, yet challenging, study break on Reading Day with a half-hour FloatFit session, which is a full-body workout that takes place on a floating mat, followed by 30 minutes of splash dance, a choreographed water aerobics workout.
“We want to get students down to the pool and using our facility,” Mazur said.
Outside of scuba certification and dive research courses offered as prerequisites, Ram Swim 101 is the first non-credit water safety course for URI students, a much-needed offering given Rhode Island’s proximity to the coastline.
“Whether you’re going to be on a boat, at the beach, lakeside or pond side, we have tons of bodies of water here in Rhode Island,” Mazur said, “and people that don’t necessarily think they might use it will find themselves in situations like that where they do need to have basic understanding of water safety and how to get themselves in and out of sticky situations.”
Robbin also encourages students to take time out of their schedules for Stress Less, Splash More as a precursor to final exams, which run for Dec. 11 to 12 and Dec. 15 and 17.
“Even if you do have 17 hours’ worth of studying to do, taking one hour for yourself to do anything, whether it’s meditation, a yoga class, taking a walk, or meeting with your friends, studies have shown you will be more productive in those other 16 hours just by taking an hour off,” Robbin said. “It really does help you to be able to think and to study and to focus and to do all those things better. It often feels like you don’t have the time or the bandwidth to add a physical component to your day, but taking that time to do something physical will relieve the mental stress and anxiety.”
Visit the Campus Recreation website for more information.
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Michael Parente, director of communications and marketing in the URI Division of Student Affairs, wrote this news release.