What other university requires students to plop a half sheet of printer paper on their dashboard, especially with the information on where they go to school stamped across the top? Most normal universities give students with parking permits a small, subtle sticker to affix to their windshield. It’s too small to draw any attention, it doesn’t slide across your dashboard and it, simply put, doesn’t look tacky.

The cost of parking permits for residential students at the University of New Haven are astronomical as it is — you would think that with the amount we pay for a car to sit between two white lines, in addition to the cost of the rest of our tuition, we would be enough to finance stickers with discreet barcodes to stick onto our cars for the duration of the academic year.

If you leave the current piece of paper loose, it will go flying off of your dashboard the second you speed up or turn on your heat or air conditioning system, but students also shouldn’t tape these down. It’s incredibly dangerous to drive around with a giant announcement of where you go to school, with all of your vehicle’s information attached directly below it for anyone with poor intentions to snap a picture of it. These parking passes place a legitimate target on students the second they drive off campus property, forcing students, especially women, to be mindful enough to take it off before leaving (which, as its own separate problem, makes it much easier to forget to put it back onto the dashboard when you return, warranting a ticket from parking compliances).

For students to drive around the Greater New Haven area with a giant announcement that they are a young college student is stupid, it’s dangerous and it makes no sense. Having your personal information printed out onto the size of a small flier is a horrible idea and one we easily could have retired years ago.

Anyone who walks by a U. New Haven student’s car can easily gather where they go to school, whether they live on campus or commute, even where on campus they park their car, their car’s make and license plate information. This makes it easy to follow them around, show up on campus or even potentially make student cars a target for break-ins if valuables are visible from the windows. Any stranger has the ability to know where to find this car safely parked with minimum security at any potential time of day.

You’d think that something so simple wouldn’t have that much room for error, but the giant printout parking passes could not be more senseless and are ultimately putting students at risk not even primarily for discipline, but for being targets beyond the open entrances of our campus.

Would it really be that difficult to give students a sticker with nothing but a barcode on it?