ash tests the system. Note the obsolete reference:
early 70s
By now we are all well acquainted with the Great Inequality on this campus, that is, that life without the Magic ID becomes one big obstacle course. Particularly when it comes to trying to cash a check. Which, I have to say, is at least somewhat substantiated. I mean, I admit as a non-student my fees are not paying the check-cashing lady’s salary in the Illini Union, nor are the drug stores protected by the knowledge that if my check’s no good, the University will threaten not to let me graduate (or something like that). After all, what better insurance is there?
But did you know that our friendly neighborhood Illini Currency Exchange also does not cash checks without a current University ID (and I thought my driver’s license would provide a little variety)? Who would have guessed that a store in the official business of exchanging money, checks for instance, will not honor any perfectly valid document which is standard identification elsewhere? Doesn’t Mr. York [the proprietor] realize that out there in the Real World a driver’s license is the going thing, is Acceptable Legal Identification, in fact, to be walking around with one of our indispensable plastic cards might be considered, what shall I say, a little eccentric? Apparently not, or is he just taking advantage of the ready-made guarantee part of every operating University ID?
Now I’m no authority on the subject, but to me this jumping on the ID Bandwagon stinks of illegitimacy. Even if it is not technicall unlawful, I simply can’t understand such a practice when the customer pays a fee for the service and should be entitled to the identification of his choice. But as I say, I am not a legal expert and would welcome feedback on the matter from someone who is.
In any case, that a public, not University, service should put the student ID on an exclusive pedestal seems a crime more heinous than McBride’s [the campus pharmacy] giving you Green Stamps only when you ask for them.
If you can’t count on the Illini Currency Exchange, then who?
