Ticket to Tables has partnered with Pack Essentials for a program that forgives parking tickets in exchange for a donation to the Feed the Pack Food Pantry. The program ran from Oct. 10, 2025, to Oct. 31, 2025 and forgives qualifying parking citations.

Isaac Carreno, a fourth-year studying political science and social work and current student body president, said the program was created as a way to address student concerns hands-on.

“We wanted to bring together some kind of program where we can address parking tickets, which is something that a lot of students express concern with,” Carreno said. “But also address the real challenges of food and security on campus and support Pack Essentials. Ticket to Table is the first time NC State is doing something like this.”

Students with a parking citation of $60 or less can purchase items from the Feed the Pack Amazon wish list; each item purchased counts as $5 toward forgiveness. The items are shipped directly to the pantry, so students don’t have to worry about any extra steps.

Alyssa Griffin, a graduate student in the marine earth and atmospheric sciences department and the Feed the Pack Food Pantry manager, said these donations have helped the pantry raise awareness about food insecurity on campus.

“Some students’ financial situations drastically change throughout the course of college. And Feed the Pack is here as a resource, where no questions asked, you don’t have to demonstrate need, you just show up and shop, just like it’s a grocery store, which I think is really important to try to reduce the stigma that life is hard,” Griffin said.

Carreno said, along with Feed the Pack Food Pantry, getting university transportation on board was a significant part of making the initiative run smoothly and successfully.

“Students are concerned with transportation and the parking apparatus and fines and how that has become increasingly expensive,” Carreno said. “So when some students have participated in the program and they email me about it, they say, ‘Thank you for this program,’ not only being able to dismiss the fines, but being able to put it towards something really meaningful on campus.”

Than Austin, director of transportation, said university transportation wanted to make the program easy and reasonable for students.

“We tried to come up with something reasonable. We wanted to incentivize the program,” Austin said. “We wanted it to be simple enough and also attractive enough that students would want to go and buy the items for the food pantry. We were not looking to be sticklers on this. We just wanted to make the program successful.”

Griffin said through Ticket to Table, the pantry has been able to support students and highlight the University’s community and resilience.

“I think everyone is going through tough times, no matter what aspect you want to analyze that at, and you have to be able to show up with the community, and [to] provide some support with your groceries is a great way to just help our community’s resilience as a whole,” Griffin said.

Austin said student input and administrative collaboration were vital to the initiative’s success.  

“In order to get buy-in from the students, we need to collaborate with them in a meaningful way and allow them to use the connections in the resources that they have,” Austin said. “We know that food security is a big issue for a lot of people in the Wolfpack community, and especially students. And this was an issue that we couldn’t tackle alone. We needed to work with the students. We needed to work with Pack Essentials.”

Griffin said university parking uses ticket fees to pay for more than students know, and it has been nice to see something usually seen as negative, like parking enforcement, used to better the community.

“It’s nice to see [university transportation’s] willingness to be able to take a slight financial hit to allow people to do good for Feed the Pack and start to give back as we slowly approach the holiday season,” Griffin said. “It’s good to have this program come out at a really good time for us to kind of amp up some of those donations as we braced for potentially an increase in demand for a service that is already in high demand.”

Carreno said he hopes to continue to see the positive impact that initiatives like Ticket to Table have on campus culture.

“We’re seeing [meaningful outcomes] in the responses in terms of wanting to do something more exciting, more meaningful for campus,” Carreno said. “I think that’s the positive reaction we want to see, and something positive that we want to see continue coming out of student government.”

Austin said the Ticket to Table initiative aims to raise awareness of food security on campus and show students that they can help, even in the smallest ways.

“I think the main takeaway is that [students] become more aware of the food security issues of their fellow students in that they have an opportunity in small ways like this to make a big difference,” Austin said.