Kansas State Parking Services will allow students, faculty and staff to reduce one parking citation per academic year by donating 10 or more non-perishable food items or hygiene products to Cat’s Cupboard, K-State’s food pantry.
The Donations for Citations program will begin Jan. 21 after the Student Governing Association approved the senate resolution on Oct. 24.
Senator Andrew Le authored the resolution and said he initially modeled the program after other regional colleges.
“We looked at other institutions across the country that kind of have some similar programs, donations for citations, food for fines, whatever you call it,” Le said. “Schools like UT Austin have a program like this. Mizzou has a program similar to this, Oklahoma, and so that’s where it started.”
Le said he worked closely with Parking Services director Adrienne Tucker to build the program after a previous resolution failed to pass the senate last year.
“Adrienne Tucker came along as the new [parking services] director, and I met with her to kind of fill her in,” Le said. “From there we redid it again, because me and Miss Tucker both agreed that this program should be way more robust than it really was.
A KSU Foundation survey found nearly 40% of K-state students will experience food insecurity at some point during their college lives.
Shelly Williams, Morrison family director for Cat’s Cupboard, said the program is “a great collaborative effort aimed at increasing food security.”
“I’m really appreciative of SGA’s support for this, and the parking services support as well,” Williams said. “And the university administration has been really great at helping bring this to fruition.”
Tucker said she dealt with food insecurity in her childhood and wanted to help students save money on citations while also helping out the K-State community.
“From my own personal experience growing up … It is a cause that is very near and dear to my heart because I’ve been there, and if there’s any way that I can help give back, then I’m all for it,” Tucker said.
Tucker said donation items should be taken to the parking services offices, not Cat’s Cupboard.
“It’s not going to change parking services, per se, but anyone who receives a citation for a non-registered or parked in a wrong location, they’ll be able to donate 10 items,” Tucker said. “They’re going to bring them into parking services, and we’ll waive that citation as a one-time courtesy. Right now, we’re going to do one per person per academic year. We’re going to see in May what that looks like and how many citations that we’ve waived, and see if we can’t bump that up to one a semester, it’s all just going to depend on how many people took advantage of the program.”
Le said K-state students can volunteer to transport the donated items to Cat’s Cupboard.
“We need people to be able to take the goods from there to the Cat’s Cupboard, and so it’s just trying to find people who are willing to do that,” Le said. “People need volunteer hours, and so [we are] creating some incentive for senators and other people of SGA, or even just other people at K-State who want to volunteer, to be able to get them to do that.”
Le said while working with other universities, he learned the University of Kansas wanted to implement a similar program.
“This is a super cool program that we’re going to be able to implement here, and KU is trying to get something similar like this up,” Le said. “If we can get it before them, that’d be great.”
