"New York City Technical College, in its 50th year of providing state-of-the-art technology education, will be the first CUNY college to introduce a universal card to City University," announced Robinette Barnes, Executive Director for Finance and Business at New York City Technical College and Coordinator for the CUNYCard implementation at her college.

"The CUNYCard," she said, speaking during the busy weeks preceding the "carding event" at NYCTC in September, "will provide NYCTC students access to electronic banking in the form of debit accounts that will allow students to pay for purchases and have direct deposit for financial-aid funds. It will eliminate the need to stand on line to pick up refund checks, allow electronic transfers from other banks, and permit cash withdrawals from ATMs worldwide. These services will be provided to our students with no monthly service fees and no enrollment fee."

Also to be noted are the optional long-distance calling card and residential long-distance services that are available at a very competitive rate to the CUNY community via the CUNYCard. Primarily, however, the card serves as a CUNY identification card for each cardholder and as the library patron card. Colleges may opt to purchase security systems that interface with the CUNYCard, thus allowing for controlled access to designated locations on campus.

The card contains two magnetic stripes on the back side. One will be used by CUNY libraries (the magnetic stripe replaces the older barcode technology) and for point-of-sale and banking functions at ATMs (for cardholders who establish the debit account). The other is a so-called "junk stripe" that can be used on college campuses that choose to outfit vending machines, copiers, and like services with the ability to accept payment via the CUNYCard. To do this, the cardholder "loads" the card with a requested amount of money (the upper limit can be controlled by the college), and then swipes it when purchasing food or services from designated sources, thus debiting from the cash balance encoded on the card.

The CUNYCard was inaugurated on September 9th, the first day of "carding" for New York City Technical College. The design concept for the card, to be used at all CUNY colleges, was contributed by NYCTC student Sal Acosta (see p. 5), who worked on it originally for a class assignment, and then under the guidance of Professor Dorothy Hayes of the Art and Advertising Design Department.

The new card features the Statue of Liberty as a watermark underlying the required card elements: digitized cardholder picture, name, CUNY logo, college name, issue date, status, card number (a.k.a. ISO number), and library patron number. The card has been praised for its functional use of color background and excellent photographic images, as well as for unifying the ID system for the entire University.

Other CUNY colleges introducing the CUNYCard this semester are Baruch College, LaGuardia Community College and Queensborough Community College. At each college the project coordinator is overseeing the many tasks that are required in order for the college to implement the CUNYCard and issue it to the college population. Arlene Isaacson, CUNYCard Coordinator at LaGuardia Community College explains that it is a college-wide effort: "As project coordinator, the planning and development for the card has involved much thought, time and effort. The cooperative assistance of LaGuardia team members has definitely been advantageous and we are all looking forward to the carding event."

Michael DiMarco, Bursar and CUNYCard Coordinator for Baruch College, also justifies the effort required to introduce the card on campus: "The CUNYCard allows students to initiate business relationships with institutions that will be useful to students long after they have graduated. The card's multi-purpose design permits CUNY to add new services periodically and will simplify campus life while providing real cost savings on banking and long distance phone transactions. The ultimate goal is to provide students with a universal card that can be used on and off campus." Queensborough has adopted the slogan: "The CUNYCard- A card for all student and staff needs - Security and Services - The Smart Card - It Makes Sense and Saves Cents!"

The first meeting for Tier Two CUNYCard colleges took place September 16th and they expect to "card" their campuses during the Spring 1997 semester.