Philip Weltner Library and Petey’s Pantry: A New Partnership Helping Students Fight Food Insecurity

Philip Weltner Library is partnering with Petey’s Pantry to offer free non-perishable food and self-care items to Oglethorpe students in need. What started as an alternative means for students to pay off their overdue library fines has become a collaboration with the campus’s own donation-funded food pantry to help students address food injustice and fight food insecurity.

Petey’s Pantry began back in the Fall of 2021 as an initiative to assess food security on campus. A subcommittee of the Student Government Association found that roughly a third of Oglethorpe students faced food insecurity. “Just because we are a private institution,” says Darmaris Ceron ’26, current President of Petey’s Pantry, “doesn’t mean [that] all students are financially well-off.” Seeking to combat this glaring statistic, the SGA subcommittee started Petey’s Pantry in order to help destigmatize food insecurity and to provide both a healthy and sustainable environment where all Petrels, regardless of income, receive the resources necessary to maintain a happy and healthy experience at Oglethorpe. Now Petey’s Pantry is a full-fledged food pantry that fulfills requests for any current student in need of assistance.

In April of 2025, Philip Weltner Library started accepting donations of non-perishable food cans as a form of payment for overdue library fees, seeking to help alleviate students’ financial burdens. Since the Library didn’t rely on overdue fees as a source of income, “It made more sense to redirect that money to something that directly impacts our students’ well-being,” said Olivia Chapman, Interim Technical Services Librarian. Thus, a donation plan was developed where each can that students donated would equal $4 that could be used toward any overdue fees they had incurred.

Despite Petey’s Pantry having a space in Lowry Hall for students to take home self-care items, and despite Philip Weltner Library giving their received donations to Petey’s Pantry, no formal partnership between the two organizations had been established. Members of the library staff regarded this disconnect as a missed opportunity, feeling that Philip Weltner Library could do more with both its space and donation policy to better support the mission of Petey’s Pantry on an ongoing basis. Library staff met with the board of Petey’s Pantry to discuss visions of how this partnership can help Oglethorpe students in need gain access to fundamental resources to help them succeed. The resulting collaboration is a win-win situation where the Pantry would have an additional avenue of receiving donations, the Library would have an easier, more useful way for students to resolve their fines and students would have more options to both give and receive resources.

Moving forward into Fall 2026 and beyond, Philip Weltner Library will be officially partnering with Petey’s Pantry with the mission to provide Oglethorpe students with free and equitable access food, resources and support. The Library is looking to update its donation policy to include personal care items, while the Pantry is looking to expand its services to include the storage and distribution of seeds as an additional way to fight food insecurity.

“Students shouldn’t have to worry about food,” said Ceron, “they should focus on having the best experience they can at Oglethorpe.”