Students should petition more urgent issues than IDs

First-year undeclared CFA student Jordan Wu created a petition last week through change.org to challenge the university’s proposed new Smart ID card designs.

The petition was shared among students on Facebook and received 227 signatures before closing. In the petition’s description, Wu told students, “I would be embarrassed showing any of these designs to anyone as a representation of our school.”

While it is justifiable for students to petition an unsatisfactory change on campus, The Tartan wants to see much of the fervor that was shown over the ID designs channeled toward more pressing matters. ID designs affect most people on campus, as students use them on a daily basis, but the image on the IDs will not directly impact a student’s well-being. Admittedly, the designs are part of campus culture, but they do not define it and will not change the image of Carnegie Mellon to outside parties.

Meanwhile, more important Carnegie Mellon issues have not caused nearly the same amount of student concern. For example, both Carnegie Mellon’s 10-year expansion plan and student elections are vastly more relevant to student life, but have not received nearly as much attention. The 10-year plan proposes changes to Carnegie Mellon’s physical campus that will directly and significantly alter students’ daily lives, while student elections affect everything from what happens on campus to our school’s image to the rest of the world.

These issues are more important than the designs of our new IDs, and should generate just as much or more controversy among the student body than the designs did.

Regardless of one’s stances on these controversies, issues much larger than the new proposed ID designs exist on campus. If students gave as much attention to these issues as they have to the new ID designs, they would be a true catalyst for change.