At colleges/universities, the students and faculty could benefit from a community specific craigslist, for example for things like swapping/selling textbooks, lost and found, rideshare, club meetings/outings. This would reduce global emails, allowing those who are interested to seek out whatever they are looking for, and those who are not interested would have a clean inbox. This may already exist at many places in different forms, which are used to varying degrees. Personally I like the layout of craigslist and would love to see it used for specific communities.
Another potential use could be for large buildings in New York, where the occupants could benefit from a communal craigslist, for example to notify their neighbors of an apartment for sale/rent, or to organize things like Halloween activities if kids live in the building.
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It has been awhile since my university days, but don't they have something now? I remember blogs and lots of varied topics, even bulletin boards with lots of notes on them.
I think this already exists, albeit not in craigslist form perhaps.
villagetoolbox.com does this, sort-of. Not so much for universities (although I suppose it could), but it is designed for neighbourhoods. Anyone can create a community, and invite others to join. (Note: the site is still in its infancy)
Most large colleges have an in-house website on which you can do things like this. However, for many of them the user interface is klutzy and therefore many students don't log in often or don't check the discussion groups if they do. I like the idea of having a discussion group that is based on a tool, such as craigslist, that people are familiar with. The original poster raised another issue I would like to talk about. Most apartment/condo complexes in the U.S. don't have their own online discussion group. The problem is that most condo associations and property managers are gung-ho about saving money and don't want to spend the money to set up and manage an online discussion group. The advantage of a tool such as Village Toolbox is that anyone who has a networked PC and a basic knowledge of computers can set up and manage a community discussion group. This makes it much more likely that a community will have one. I think Village Toolbox has a lot of potential for this, once it is fully up and running. As of now there are only about 7 community discussion groups there, all in Guelph, Ontario.