In a University press conference last weekend, LSU’s Vice President of Student Security and Finance, Vanessa Price, revealed that all LSU students will be required to purchase new ID cards before the current semester concludes. 

      The new glow-in-the-dark, fluorescent green cards, which will include crude self-portraits etched onto their surfaces in favor of pixilated digital photographs, are only a small part of the long list of adjustments that LSU’s administration hopes to make on campus before the next academic year.

      The newly-designed ID cards will be twice as large as and five times heavier than the existent LSU ID cards, though Price says they will be bulky and oversized for a variety of good reasons.

	Above: Price already has her card and hates it.

      “First and foremost, bigger means faster.  LSU students can access their Tiger Express and Paw Points accounts at almost light-speed with the larger cards.  Shorter card-swipes should save hundreds of minutes a year for students.  Also, these enormous cards should be too large for most pants pockets, meaning that students will have to carry them in their hands or satchels, which will seriously cut down on the number of lost and stolen cards.”

      Six years ago, LSU began circulating the present style of ID cards, which was thought to be the ultimate, fool-proof version of college student identification.  Since then, however, thousands of hapless students have had their ID cards disappear into thin air, unexpectedly shatter into tiny pieces, or spontaneously burst into purple and gold-colored flames.

	Above: The cards will look just like this except with pictures of real students on them, not pictures of models portraying students.

      To ensure that the new cards would be impervious to such random occurrences, Price enlisted the help of LSU’s award-winning metalworking department, who suggested that the cards be forged out of heavy-duty, steel-reinforced titanium.

      Dell Burquard, straining over his latest 50-foot tall steel sculpture for Art 5243, commented, “One day they’re going to make everything out of metal instead of cheap plastic.  Bottles, cars, Mardi Gras beads, children…LSU is on the cutting edge of technology with these new ID cards.  They’re expensive as hell, though, and I hate them.”

      Since each new card will use over a pound of heavy titanium instead of the usual three ounces of lightweight plastic, Price admits that the cards will be quite costly to produce.  She estimates that students will have to pay around $75 apiece for the new ID cards.  An optional ID card insurance fee of $25 will be available for those students who fear that they might misplace their card or have it stolen and sold as scrap metal to foreign military armor manufacturers.

        Price also stated that beginning on April 20 until April 23, those students whose last name begins with the letters A through G, but not F, who also have first names that end in a letter between R and Y, can purchase their new ID cards at the Office of Paw Express Tiger Points Accounts in the LSU Union.