Opinions

LoggerCards contradict campus sustainability

Ah, the predictable rant about the new ID cards. Of course. We could spend all day smacking our gums about their ridiculous layout, the disastrous lines at the info center to receive one and about how all of those poor info center workers were drowned snippy people during the already stressful first two weeks of classes.

I, however, would like to delve deeper on this matter and ask the question every class on this campus teaches us and that is – why? What was the incentive in assigning all students new ID cards?

Security measures? Fine. Updating system? Fine. Producing thousands of new plastic cards without any explanation as to how they were produced or what the administration will do with our “old” ones? Not so fine.

Our campus applauds itself for being sustainable and advertises itself as such. There are compostable cups in the café and SUB, recycled notebooks available in the bookstore and free reusable mugs to all incoming freshmen.

But there is no longer compost available for use on campus, a major factor in measuring our environmental impact. How many people actually recycle their own notebooks after the semester, anyway? Those mugs usually hold other libations only on weekends instead of water or coffee during class.

Other major institutions offer more high tech options when updating their cards. For example, at the University of Utah, your ID card is also used as an electronic pass to gain free access to all public transportation options in the state of Utah. The same is true of our peers to the north at the University of Washington.

Other major universities have taken more corrupt options and have partnered with large banks to double your ID card as your debit card. Subsequently, the university makes millions in profit off of the fees from students. Thankfully, Puget Sound has yet to enact this option and will hopefully take up in the pattern of more progressive universities.

What is the impact of these new ID cards? Is someone in the administration holding some sort of stock option in their manufacturing company or something? Did the school hire someone and pay them our tuition dollars to come up with “Logger Card” on the side? Seriously? What will happen to the upperclassmen’s old cards? That is a lot of plastic (and memories) to toss out.

The idea of a new ID card is not all that appalling, but that the manner in which the University enacted and produced the staggering task of giving each student and faculty member a new ID card is contradictory and detrimental to its “sustainable” campus ideology.

For all the trouble the “Puget Sound” has been going through to remarket itself, they should have attached new privileges to these cards to make them more than merely a cosmetic improvement. Current students deserve attention and care just as much as prospective students.