Student MetroCards are a feature many students look forward to at the beginning of the school year. It means that students can afford to safely arrive and depart from school every day. 

According to the MTA, student metro cards come with three free rides each school day between the hours of 5:30 am to 8:30 pm including a free transfer. This is extremely useful, especially if students can’t afford to pay the fares.

Despite the convenience of a free ride, students are very prone to losing items, especially a thin card such as this. Oftentimes, students misplace MetroCards and have to try and get home without one. 

Sometimes students end up with a kind bus driver, who knows that it would be wrong to deny a minor a ride home, especially if they show a student identification as proof. In these cases, the driver allows the student to board the bus anyway.

In other cases, a driver may not be so kind-hearted and tell a student that they cannot board without proof of a student MetroCard. Then that student is stuck finding another way home or hoping that the next bus has a nicer driver.

WJPS senior Sayed Shah said, “Sometimes the drivers purposely hold their hand over the pay box so they don’t have to deal with waiting for kids to pay.” 

This indicates a whole other aspect of the convenience of having student MetroCards. Do drivers prefer students getting on without their cards?

WJPS senior Trinity Andujar said, “I feel like it’s fair if a driver denies a student a ride without a card because you can’t tell that some students are students unless they’re wearing a clear school uniform.”

Every student has a different opinion or statement on the driver’s policies, and this all begs the question: are certain drivers just sticklers for the rules, or do they all have different morals?