by Shannon Kelly ’26 on November 13, 2025
News
The Offices of Public Safety, Transportation, and Parking recently announced that the Food for Fines initiative will return this holiday season. This initiative offers undergraduate students, graduate students, GAs, faculty, and staff a chance to bring in five non-perishable food items or hygienic products, and in turn, receive a void on one $25 parking citation that does not include a safety violation. Students are encouraged to clear more than one parking citation, as you can submit 10 items to receive two voids.
The purpose of this program goes beyond simply clearing parking tickets. The collected items are donated to a local food bank, ultimately helping the community, which is especially important when several people in Rhode Island are facing food insecurity. Food for Fines—commonly referred to as Donations for Citation—has proved to be extremely successful at other colleges and universities, at times saving students tens of thousands of dollars on parking citations. There is hope that there will be similar effects here at PC.
This initiative is being launched thanks to the efforts of three Providence College students, namely Jacob Bowser ’28, Kate Fradin ’26, and Rory Sheridan ’27. This semester, all three students are in Dr. Rick Battistoni’s Community Organizing class. This course focuses on understanding social, economic, and political problems through the lens of organizers and allows students to act on these problems through community-oriented practices. They initiated a conversation with both Public Safety and the Office of Transportation, with all agreeing to a two-week pilot initiative, though the students are hoping to make this a permanent policy change.
Student support is necessary in order to best assist our local community, and the implementation of this program will allow it to run longer. This effort was in effect last week, Monday–Wednesday, Nov. 10–12, from 9 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. and will also be in effect Monday–Wednesday, 17–19, from 9 a.m. to 3:30 p.m.. The donation drop-off location is the Transportation Office, which is located in Alumni Hall LL06.