Food for fines: Replace parking tickets with charitable donations

Wichita State University. University of Texas. University of Alaska Fairbanks. University of Idaho. Rowan University. Duke University. Brandeis University. Cleveland State University.

What do all of these institutions have in common? A “food for fines” program, where students who have been issued parking tickets can pay off their citations by bringing in certain food items, which are then donated to a local food shelf.

It’s the type of program that St. Ben’s and St. John’s should consider implementing – for the good of students and the local community.

At the University of Notre Dame, for example, the school promotes a list of items, criteria and their corresponding value: $5 for food items (canned food, peanut butter, nut butter, rice, spaghetti, egg noodles, ketchup and mustard) and $10 for non-food items (shampoo, conditioner, body wash, toothpaste, cleaning wipes and deodorant). Most programs run for a couple of months, usually leading up to the holiday season.

Stillwater, Minn. (among a slew of other cities and public libraries – for overdue fines) even ran a “food for fines” program for downtown parking tickets in 2015. Their then-police chief said that the city uses the fine revenue, usually around $2,000-$3,000 per month, to fund parking maintenance and personnel. Although it’s unknown what St. Ben’s and St. John’s uses their fine revenue for, it’s hard to imagine that the colleges couldn’t bite the financial bullet for a couple of months out of the year.

After all, don’t programs like these embody what college is supposed to be about?

It’s no secret that college has become increasingly transactional. If you disagree, I’d encourage you to ask any student what their student loan balance is (chances are, they’ll know) or take a look at the multitude of posters that go something like this: “Show up to our club meeting, there will be pizza” or “come to this event, it has an Artistic Engagement/gender/race/ethnicity designation.”

In our effort to revive participation post-COVID, we’ve created a system that has made students think they deserve something, just for showing up – beyond, of course, the enrichment of simply participating in an experience, making new friends or gaining new knowledge.

Which is why it’s less important that we implement a “food for fines” program (although that would be amazing) and more important that we all start to think differently about how we’re functioning as an engaged campus community. We need innovative ideas for enriching the lives of students and allowing them to be a part of something bigger than themselves – ideally, in a capacity that helps them give back to those around them. We need to make college less transactional.

Some of these concepts already exist on our campuses. Any Johnnie who has lived in Flynntown is familiar with how post-offense discipline works: wake up before the sun, workout with one of the faculty residents at 6 a.m., go to Mass at 7 a.m. and eat breakfast with the monks after. The number of days depends on the offense and a little thing that Br. Paul Richards called relationship equity – the better the faculty residents know you (because you’re around for Sunday meal and/or other activities), the better off you’ll be. Anecdotally, the system works like a charm.

But more are needed. The Benedictine Values teach us about the values of community and giving or participating for its own sake rather than expecting something in return. Implementing programs like “food for fines” not only still teaches accountability but also promotes giving back to the community, which could potentially incentivize students to give back in the future.

Though there are some aspects of college that tend to need to be more transactional, like tuition and meal plans, the liberal arts is about learning not only in the classroom but also finding ways to implement this learning into our own lives – accumulating fees to pay to the institutions, which then seem to go nowhere, doesn’t seem to encourage this lesson.