Some Parking Citations May Be Handled Through the Work It Off Program

All the information about the Work It Off Program is online.

University of Arkansas students can do community service as payment for a parking citation of $50 or less through the Work It Off Program, which is a collaborative effort through Transit and Parking and the Associated Student Government.

Sophomore Samuel Lipson, a director on the ASG Executive Cabinet in the area of Transit and Parking, said he hopes more students will take advantage of the program this semester.

In his role, Lipson is the contact person for the Work it Off Program.

The program has a cap of 1,000 tickets that can be worked off in a school year, but so far during the 2018-2019 school year it has been underutilized, with a little more than 200 students working off the cost of a citation.

"We feel like part of the issue is a lack of awareness," Lipson said. "Something needs to be done to encourage more utilization of the program."

The program does not apply to all citations, and there is a limit to a student using it only once in a school year. All of the guidelines are at the Work It Off Program page.

The website states, "It is the aim of the program to get as many people involved in the community as possible, not to allow abuse by repeat offenders."

Lipson said he wants there to be more exposure this semester so that more students can work off a citation.

He also said he has two goals with the program: to get more students involved in the community, and to give students something to fall back on when they get a citation, especially when they are still learning about parking options and the illegal parking was simply an oversight.

Lipson said there are many ways that students can help on matters that are off campus. "It's about finding social causes that might be important to them," he said.

He also likes the idea that the program allows students to handle certain citations in a different way.

"If someone is getting a third, fourth, and fifth citation," Lipson said, "we aren't here to promote that kind of behavior, and that's not what this program is for anyway. It's easy to make a mistake and get one citation. The bottom line of the program is that mistakes happen, and we want to provide a way for students to learn from them."