The all-important car window sticker

In certain circles, the car window sticker for the big-name college or university is essential for keeping the family up the status meter. I thought of that this morning when I saw a Mercedes SUV at the Y with stickers for Princeton and Williams, or was it Dartmouth and Williams &mdash (dang, seen one lofty Ivy, you've seen 'em all)?

For some reason, a volunteer task I've always taken on at my kids' public schools is merchandising, selling the school logo T-shirts and similar items. For a few years when my kids were at SFUSD's Lakeshore Elementary, we gave out license-plate frames promoting Lakeshore as a reward for joining the Lakeshore PTA. I view that as marketing for an underappreciated product, public schools. That's a seriously radical populist statement in some circles.

Now my older child attends San Francisco School of the Arts (SOTA) , a sought-after SFUSD high school that requires an audition to get in. So I guess the SOTA sticker on my Dodge Caravan is sort of in a gray area — marketing or boasting?

I'm surprised that there's not more of a market for witty parodies of those prestigious window stickers. It seems like a wide-open irony opportunity.