Since December, administrators have discovered forged parking permits in cars parked in the Gunn parking lot, raising questions about student integrity and the efficacy of the school’s parking system.
At the beginning of each school year, the Student Activities Center sells parking permits, which are required for students to park their cars in the parking lot. Only juniors and seniors with driver’s licenses are able to purchase one, and those living beyond El Camino Real, Foothill Expressway, Page Mill Road or Adobe Creek are eligible to purchase permits a week earlier than other students. Students must provide their name, parents’ names, grade, driver’s license number, license plate number and car model. This identifying information is then linked to each pass. According to Assistant Principal of Facilities Dr. Mycal Hixon, as of April 8, all of the passes are sold out, but there is a waiting list for interested students.
The Palo Alto Police Department is responsible for ticketing cars without permits in the parking lot, which they try to do on a daily basis. Administrators first discovered a fake pass when ticketing officers called a student to move their car from a handicapped parking spot and found that the person who answered the phone was not the person whose information was linked to the parking pass.
One senior, who requested anonymity to protect themselves from disciplinary action, was unable to purchase a parking pass and decided to create a counterfeit.
“I was willing to buy one, and I even went and talked with them multiple times to try to get one,” they said. “(The school said they needed) to count the number of available spaces. I was like, okay, and that took them like three months to figure out. In the meantime, I figured out how to trace one to make a copy.”
The anonymous senior made a few passes for other students, and is also aware of other students who are making replicas. At first, the senior made the fake passes with polyvinyl chloride sublimation, before starting to order directly from the company that manufactures Gunn’s permits.
Administrators believe that there are currently 20 or more fake permits in circulation. Each legitimate pass has a unique ID number. Most counterfeit passes are identifiable because they repeat ID numbers, but most times they go unnoticed because ticketing officers aren’t able to closely check each pass’s ID.
According to Hixon, administrators have started looking into harder-to-fake permits for next school year, such as ones that use more laser-perforated holes or ultraviolet images for identification. Those with counterfeit permits this year may receive a parking citation or a ban from purchasing a permit in the future.
“(The security) started checking a bit, and there’s some people who had poorly made replicas,” the anonymous senior said. “For the people who I’ve seen get their fakes taken, the campus supervisor came up to them while they were in their car and asked to see it up close. Then they would ask for your name, and if the name didn’t match the one that was on the list, they would take it and not give it back.”
Senior Indira Raja, who has been on the parking pass waitlist for nine months, resorted to parking without a permit because driving is her only way to get to school.
“I know that the construction takes up a lot of the parking lot spaces, and there have been fake parking passes some of the students have been getting, so it’s been super difficult for the admin to give enough spaces for the students,” she said. “But I also just don’t want to be scared to get a parking ticket while I’m sitting in my sixth-period class.”
