Every time I go to the airport the guard asks me for my ID. So I pull out my Country Day ID and show it to the guard, only to receive a look like “Are you serious?”

This is because my school ID looks fake.

“They look like something I could type up on my computer, print out, and laminate,” senior Max Xie said.

While other high schools in the area have valid-looking student ID cards, ours look cartoon-like and homemade, and, consequently, illegitimate.

On the Rio Americano card there are a scanning area and a student ID number. Also on the Rio card, the date, school name and school slogan are all in the same font and colors, making it more professional.

If we turn our cards around and hold them in the air, we can even see through them. Our cards are flimsy. Imagine how much more legitimate our student ID cards would look if they were plastic instead of paper.

Our school ID should be something we are proud of, something to pull out and say, “I go to Sacramento Country Day School,” not something we feel we have to hide in the back of our wallets because it might be questioned.

Junior Jackie Fischer was at Forever 21 buying clothes with her credit card when she was asked for an ID.

“They said they didn’t want to be liable for fraud,” Fischer said.

Forever 21 would not accept Fischer’s card because of her school ID, and, therefore, Fischer’s mom had to pay for her. “It was quite embarrassing,” she said.

Sophomore David Coffill was held up at the Portland airport because of his ID. The security guard initially questioned him because he looked over 18.

“The guards had to inspect my ID multiple times because it looked so amateurishly made,” Coffill said.

After the incident, Coffill spent $23 on a California State Identification Card.

But Country Day students shouldn’t have to buy an additional ID.

Swentowsky Photography, the company who takes our school pictures, makes the IDs, administrative assistant Erica Wilson said. The school receives a disk of cards, so if a student ever loses a card, another one can easily be made for free.

Rio Americano High School students get their pictures and IDs from the company Lifetouch. The IDs do not cost the school anything, and the company loans the school the card machine during the year.

According to Donna Lauppe, Studio Director at Swentowsky, the machine that Lifetouch uses costs $5,000, and to make a profit of off this, the prices of packages would have to be raised about $20.

Also, if they used a machine to make the ID cards, Swentowsky would have to be at SCDS taking pictures for a third day—which would make teachers unhappy, she said.

Therefore, the cards cannot be the hard plastic material, but there are other ways they could look more realistic.

Lauppe says that the school could work with Swentowsky to redesign our cards, and because Country Day students are creative, it could be a project to incorporate our school logo into a card.

It is the school’s choice about the design.Our IDs should be taken seriously, not mistaken for a joke.