The University of Connecticut Undergraduate Student Government and UConn Parking Services are teaming up again to allow students to pay off their parking tickets by donating nonperishable goods on Oct. 29 from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. at the Innovative Partnership Building.
Students can bring in donations of nonperishable items to go towards their unpaid parking ticket balance. Items will be matched in comparable price categories of $3, $5, $7 and $10, according to USG President Venice Montanaro. These items are then donated to Husky Harvest, UConn’s free food pantry for students.
“So lower priced things are like cans, bags of rice, things like that,” Montanaro said. “As you go up [in price], it is things that Husky Harvest has requested, such as boxes of cereal… so we equated that to $7.”
The $10 category is an addition to the program focused on personal hygiene items like menstrual products and laundry detergent, Montanaro said. Students can also donate body washes, hair conditioner and shampoo.
There is no limit to how much students can pay off through donations, Montanaro said.
“If you have $800 worth of tickets, you can pay them all off,” she said. “Any amount of tickets you have, any price range, you can pay it off even if it’s on your fee bill, even if it has a late fee attached to it, you can still pay it off.”
Montanaro said that if students have tickets to pay off but can’t make it to the event, they can give a friend their information, including their NetID, and have the friend drop off the donations.
Students cannot donate items with the intention of putting credit towards their account in the event they accrue future tickets, Montanaro said. Students also cannot donate items they got from USG events or Husky Harvest, as this “takes away from the full mission” of the event, she said.
The event is back after its huge success last semester, said Montanaro.
“In six hours, we had over 100 students come and pay off $8,400 in parking tickets,” she said. “It filled up a full truck… but the realistic part of it is that was in April and it was all gone by September, because it had been used and people took advantage of it because they needed those things.”
UConn Facilities Operations Associate Director of Logistics Andy Kelly said that Parking Services was “incredibly enthused” by the success of the initiative last semester.
Money accrued from student parking tickets goes back to the students in one way or another, Kelly said. Most of the time, the additional money not used to maintain parking facilities goes towards university scholarships and grants. In the case of this event, the money is going towards donations for Husky Harvest.
Kelly said he wouldn’t be surprised if this semester’s event sees up to 25% more participation than last semester’s, though the volume of citations hasn’t changed much from last year. He said Parking Services is “excited about the possibilities of increased participation this year.”