Most people have them but most people hate them. Parking passes are an important thing in the life of a highschooler. With the hefty price of $85, most kids dread paying for them. Some have gone in far measures just to avoid the price of a parking pass; to parking in the Jewish lot all the way to trying to photocopy them, students have thought of numerous of way to avoid the cost.

You hear all the fuss of getting around the parking pass but do most people even know the origin of them? Who creates these artistic, colorful masterpieces every year and how are they created?
In the class AP Studio Art, junior students work together to create each year’s upcoming parking pass. The creation of the pass has been months in the making; since the final weeks of school. The current parking pass was created by three students: senior Megan Fisher, senior Caleb Licata, senior Matthew Gunn. They brainstormed ideas and produced the current pass.

“Each year my AP students who are Juniors create the parking pass during the two weeks after the seniors have left and the end of school, “ art teacher Cara Deffenbaugh said.

The creation processes is more tedious than you may expect. The original idea of the back of the car came from Fisher. By adding in the idea of the license plate, that came from other students in the class, the parking pass design was formed.

“My whole thought process was there was a lot of same designs throughout the years, so I wanted to do something completely different. That’s when I thought of the car and then with the license plate it became really different,” Fisher said. She created the original drawing with pen and paper. Then the other creators, Licata and Gunn, did the digital aspect such as coloring and tracing.

The creation of the parking pass became almost of a tradition for the junior class. Every year the junior class is the one that creates of the parking pass for their senior year class. “They were all Juniors and it was decided by that group of AP Studio Art students who would work on what,“ Deffenbaugh said. This tradition goes way back. It stands as a memorable as the seniors last and finals years.

Overall the creation of these parking passes is quite an eye roll. Maybe the price isn’t as bad as most people may think. It is quite the long and tedious process that takes multiple hours. Gunn and Licata did coloring and digital aspects of the current design. Fisher created the drawing on paper. As time goes on, who will create our senior parking pass? We may not know now but with this extensive tradition of great art work, it is in good hands.