Ole Miss Grads Create College-Only Marketplace App to Improve Student Safety

Students with a university-affiliated email address can download Rumie to safely buy, sell or rent items such as clothing and furniture.

Ole Miss Grads Create College-Only Marketplace App to Improve Student Safety

OXFORD, Miss. — Two University of Mississippi graduate students created an app to help college and university students safely buy and sell goods online.

Tanner McCraney said he came up with the idea during his freshman year at Ole Miss when he listed items on Facebook Marketplace.

“To my surprise, I was met with creeps and scammers wanting to meet up with me in a Walmart parking lot or wanting me to come in their house, and they were non-university students,” McCraney told The Auburn Plainsman. “So this was terrifying. I was like, I don’t want to go to your house, or I don’t want to meet you in the middle of a Walmart parking lot, I just want to sell this with a student.”

With help from his longtime friend, Patrick Phillips, McCraney developed Rumie (Regulated University Marketplace Internet Exchange), an app that only people with college-affiliated emails can sign up for to buy, sell or rent tickets, books, clothing, electronics, and furniture. By requiring campus-affiliated emails, users are then bound to their school’s code of conduct.

“It’s very easy to report any kind of misconduct that happens on the app, and that can get forwarded to upper management at the university,” said McCraney. “With your ‘.edu’ email address, it’s connected to your name, so there’s full transparency.”

Students will also soon have the option to coordinate shipped purchases between campuses. Users are currently required to independently handle shipping if buying or selling an item on a different campus. Rumie also advertises specials and other deals from local businesses.

“With the new version, we also have a deals page where it’s just gonna be an entire page where we allow local businesses to offer discounts to students,” McCraney said. “College students are broke, including myself, and if students need to find a cheap meal, they could go look on the deals page and see whatever the cheapest meal is nearby, or who’s offering a discounted meal for students.”

In April 2022, Phillips and McCraney pitched the app during Ole Miss’ 18th annual Gillespie Business Plan Competition, reports The Daily Journal. The entrepreneurs took home first place which awarded a $10,000 cash prize, another $5,000 for the Stephen E. Rowell Entrepreneur Award, and free office space.

Rumie currently has over 6,500 users on 16 campuses in 11 states, according to its website. For more information about the product, visit rumieapp.com.

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Amy is Campus Safety’s Executive Editor. Prior to joining the editorial team in 2017, she worked in both events and digital marketing.

Amy has many close relatives and friends who are teachers, motivating her to learn and share as much as she can about campus security. She has a minor in education and has worked with children in several capacities, further deepening her passion for keeping students safe.

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