Editorial
Arizona Daily Wildcat
January 23, 1998

Bad Timing

Starting in March, we'll all be getting new identification cards. Every one of the 35,000 students on campus, along with all the faculty and staff members, will be trading in his trusty piece of plastic for a new and improved piece of plastic.

This new card will have all the features of the current Cat Card, adding only a microchip and replacing the current eight-digit identification number with the 16-digit number Saguaro Credit Union uses.

So why the change? So all the I.D. cards on campus will look the same. There are 19 different kinds of cards in use at the university; the new Cat Card will make for the ultimate in uniformity among identification.

All of this sounds fine and reasonable. Except for one thing: why do this in March?

In two weeks at the beginning of March, every card on campus will be exchanged. Two months later, a good percentage of those cards will be discarded after the annual matriculation of seniors in May. Why give perfectly good cards to people who will be graduating before they get to experience the joy that is Cat Card?

The current version of the Cat Card debuted last August. August, the beginning of the school year, the traditional time for starting new school projects. Even seniors graduating in December got to use the card for a full four months.

And don't think you're excused just because you got a new card last week. Don't get too attached, buster. The new Cat Cards, for some reason, were not available at the start of this semester, hence the March distribution date. Every card issued between now and the beginning of the card replacement drive will have to be . . . replaced.

The introduction should be pushed back to the beginning of the fall semester. The re-issuing of cards will still be a nightmare, but it will at least seem to serve a purpose.