San Marcos parking passes are flawed for a variety of reasons, primarily because they leave a permanent mark on so much more than your car. The most important factor to consider is that student parking passes are adhesive-based as opposed to a placard that hangs from the rearview mirror or just a ticket that lives on the dashboard. At face value, an adhesive sticker isn’t the worst form of a parking permit, especially because many other establishments use them. However, I’m convinced that San Marcos uses super-glue level adhesives to make their stickers, and I’m not alone in this. According to a senior at SMHS, “There is still goo stuck on my windshield from my parking pass last year because it was so difficult to remove!” This student also noted, “If we had a pass that we could just move from car-to-car, it would be so much more convenient.”
Dos Pueblos has a placard, and so does Santa Barbara High, and don’t forget our own school, but for teachers only? I can understand the need to distinguish student and staff permits from each other, maybe by implementing separate color schemes, but entirely changing the design does not help; it just makes the already sticky mess worse. Let’s say you have already placed your sticker on the windshield, but your car needs maintenance. This leaves you susceptible to a ticket or a boot on your wheel, solely because your car needed service and you couldn’t move the permit. Upon registering for a parking pass, a decent amount of information is collected so you can have your spot at SM, most likely held in a database that apparently is never checked! Students leave notes with all the information needed to verify the car, and are met with a bright orange sticker, or the inability to drive home after class.
Additionally, not everyone has access to the same car every day; many people drive different cars to school depending on the day or other circumstances. Daniel Serrano, another senior on campus, has received numerous citations because of this exact issue. He has a permit, but since it’s physically tied to just one of the cars he drives, he receives violations whenever he parks a different vehicle at school. There is a risk of perhaps losing a removable placard, but at least you have the ability to relocate it, and skip the hassle of writing a note, or getting a temporary pass, and most frustratingly, scraping off yet another sticker plastered onto your car. Finally, to add the absolute cherry on top, San Marcos students are paying excessively for such an impractical design. It costs $40 to have a parking pass in itself, and if you wanted a spot in the A-lot, it was an additional $60!
After consulting a student at Santa Barbara High, I discovered they incur a $45 charge for their permit, but as mentioned before, they have a movable placard and significantly less enforcement. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen or heard of that at SB,” stated an SB senior after I mentioned our orange warning stickers and car boots. And after talking with a student at DP, I found out their passes only cost $10; in placard form, too! I can understand if San Marcos is unable to reduce prices to $10, yet I expect some reduction in price and dilemmas that stem from sticky permits.
