Student ID Adventures

So, when I was in England last year, the Harvard ID that I got as a 1L expired in June.  Which was a problem that I had anticipated well in advance – in the summer of 2008, before I left for England, I spent some time trying to track down the new ID that I would need to have upon returning in Fall 2009.  The ID office told me authoritatively that the law school registrar would have my ID ready and waiting for me at “registration” in Fall 2009, and not to worry.

So, over a year later, “registration” for my final semester of classes happened online with no discussion of my ID.  No problem; I went to the registrar’s office.  They acted particularly clueless, but told me not to go back to the ID office, and instead just wait.  It would come over from the ID office eventually.  So myself, and the other three HLS students who did the Cambridge program with me, waited.  For about two weeks.  Meanwhile, we had to go through complex negotiations to get into the library and the gym; we learned the secret codes that we had to say to the desk guards to get them to let  us in without our working IDs.  Every so often, one of us would get motivated and go bug either the registrar or the ID office, but they would just say, quite authoritatively, that the other office must have them.  A few of us managed to get some “old-style” IDs missing one of the magnetic stripes they were supposed to have, but that was about it.

Finally, one of us went to the ID office and lucked out – he got a new one printed on the spot.  Inspired, I marched in there, waited in a 10+ person long line, and was then sent to sit in a chair when I explained my situation.  At first, the guy who I spoke to wanted to send me to the registrar’s office, but I told him very authoritatively that “they sent me here.”  After a number of phone calls, he finally located all of our IDs (which had actually already been printed after all).  They were hidden “in the red box.”

So, fourteen months after I first tried to get my new student ID, I finally managed to get it out of the red box.  (I directed the other HLS/Cambridge students looking for their IDs to go to the ID office and demand the Red Box.)

This is still vaguely concerning to me, because I expect that I’ll need another new ID printed in the spring if I continue to do research here at the Harvard Law Library.  And that will be a whole new adventure.  Stay tuned!