Editor,
Forgery - a time-honored tradition that has been going on for decades. Now some bums have actually decided to try it out with UNM parking permits.
Come on, people. Is it really that difficult to buy a permit? All you have to do is get a high paying job at the beginning of summer, save about half of each of paycheck, go a week or two with out eating and then maybe you can afford a permit. But instead, people insist on saving a few hundred dollars any way they can, including forging parking permits.
I couldn't help but notice in the picture on the front page of Thursday's Daily Lobo that there were many fake permits for South Lot. OK, if you're smart enough to reproduce a parking permit, you've got to be smart enough to get one closer than South Lot. If you can make a fake permit to South Lot, you better also be able to make a fake tent to camp out in if you want to get to class in time since the lot is practically in Mexico.
And what about these fake handicapped tags? Sure, they may be handy, but you're taking places away from people with twisted ankles, stubbed toes or even the occasional bellyache. Granted there are many people who deserve these tags, but they are often handed out for the most minute situation nowadays.
When I was a kid (last year) we didn't get any special privileges for any minor boo-boo. We were given a minor bandage and told to walk it off. So to those of you who are forging handicapped permits, I suggest you try to earn a real one instead, because as Clovis Acosta, director of the Parking and Transportation Services department, said, sooner or later you will get busted.
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Parking permits are getting harder and harder to counterfeit because manufacturers are constantly coming up with "new tricks" to slow down this process. According to Acosta, individual barcodes are being added to the permits that can be scanned through the windshield. While Parking Services is at it, why doesn't it use a special ink so whenever a permit is scanned, it shoots an ultraviolet ink in a 10 foot radius, causing whoever is covered in the ink to automatically short circuit car engines when they touch the steering wheel, rendering the car useless? Now that I think about it, maybe that's why parking permits cost so much. We're not paying for the space, we're paying for the technically advanced permits. Genius.
Forging parking permits is wrong and illegal, but perhaps if they were more reasonably priced and more conveniently available, students wouldn't be as tempted to counterfeit them.
Permits are getting harder and harder to forge and University parking officers are going through intense specialized training to help them spot these fakes. But if there's anyone out there who can properly clone a permit for A Lot, please contact me before next semester, for educational purposes only, of course.
Rusty Rutherford
UNM student
