Fake IDs at the University of Denver

Many consider turning 21 a rite of passage and hold in deep regard their first legally bought drink. However a growing trend among college students to obtain and use fake IDs, a trend apparent nationally as well at the University of Denver, begs the question whether or not young adults these days feel it is worth the wait.

When asked why it is that underage students get fake IDs, the responses varied among DU students. According to Kat Buyskins, a freshman at the University of Denver—who first responded with a chuckle and a joking “because they’re hooligans” comment—it’s a means to an end. Students want to party and get drunk and this enables them to do this, she said.

Anne Menier, a sophomore at DU, said students get fake IDs just for the social bar scene.

 “I feel like the bar scene is big at DU—especially for freshman who don’t know a lot of people who have houses,” Menier said. “It’s a good social setting.”

Also commenting on the social scene of DU, freshman Jayda Copper agrees that this school, for one reason or another, seems to be more of a bar school than a party school.

“All of the upperclassmen talk about it, so you just hear about it all the time,” she added.

According to Captain James Day, Manager of Technology & Security Services at the University of Denver’s Department of Campus Safety most underage college students like to drink and go to clubs which is why they get fake IDs. The problem, he explained, is that they frequently lack good judgment in this regard. 

“Perhaps that’s why the drinking age is 21”, Day said.

While possession of a fake ID is a class 6 felony that is subject to one to one and a half-years  of prison and a $1000-$100,000 fine, it seems to be a general consensus that though there is a fear of getting caught, it is only a moderate fear. According to Menier, the fear of getting caught doesn’t keep people from attempting to use their “fakes”. If a bouncer feels your ID is too fake, they will generally just turn you away, she said. So students with fake IDs are not worried about legal consequences, just about not getting in or, at the very worst, getting their ID taken away.

Only at the beginning of the year do bars threaten to call the cops, Menier said, which generally deters students for a while, but not forever.

Yet, it would seem that if anything would deter students, the consequences of getting caught by campus security would. Though Day preferred not to comment on the specific possibilities for punishment, fake IDs fall under “integrity” in DU’s Code of Student Conduct. Under section VIII of the same document, it states that punishment can include warning, probation, suspension, dismissal, written assignments, programs, and other preventative activities. Any student found under the influence is sent to detox.

While national statistics on the number of college students estimated to be using fake IDs are unavailable, Copper related a story which revealed nine out of ten random DU students who happened to be in the same room had or were in the process of obtaining a fake ID. While this statistic may not necessarily be representative of the population as a whole, it is, as Copper stated, a surprising revelation.

However, Buyskins, though she admits that DU has a problem statistically, says she is able to easily avoid the scene.

“I haven’t bumped into it myself. I can’t say I feel affected,” she said.

It seems that the students and campus security alike think the fake IDs are an issue on campus.

According to Copper the bars around the University of Denver campus generally will let a student in even if a “fake” is used as long as you have some sort of ID and you can answer the personal identification questions they ask.

As long as they won’t get in trouble, they don’t care. From what I hear, The Border is mostly all underage kids. I think the bar knows that,” said Copper.

As far as how students get these IDs in the first place, the process seems to be underground. With a very skeptical and cryptic answer from DU’s campus security, who called it “confidential information that they are unwilling to disclose generally or specifically”, it would seem that this is one subject that they would prefer to keep on the quiet side.

Though, as the students said in their interviews, you tend to just know someone who knows someone that happens to be making a “batch” of them at the time. Any search on the internet gives easy access to the process as a whole and many places even offer services. According to an online site called theidshop.com, IDs are first designed, printed on a material (such as PVC) and then laminated. A fake can cost anywhere from sixty dollars to hundreds of dollars for a “good” one which includes realistic holograms and a magnetic strip.

The trend, according to all of those interviewed, seems to be that it is generally freshmen who obtain fake IDs and then they keep it until they turn 21. In other words there is not a trend toward only freshmen using them. It is just a trend that students tend to get them first as freshmen.

Those who get fake IDs mostly use them for the bar scene that is prevalent at DU and, on occasion, at liquor stores.

Surprisingly, according to Menier, there are liquor stores around campus that have been to known to be as lenient as the bars around campus.

She said, “I have friends who go to stores nearby who don’t even get carded anymore.”

Leniency seems to the biggest effect on students using their IDs. Both Copper and Menier feel as though bars and liquor stores in the area let it slide.

“Ninety-nine percent of the time bouncers know that the majority of kids at The Border are under age,” said Menier. “It’s how they make their money.”

While this is information that is difficult to prove, it is, nevertheless, quite disturbing news to many. Day of DU’s campus security remarks that if places around campus were less lenient, underage students would probably not be as likely to even try to buy alcohol and get into bars, which would, consequently, lessen the demand for fake IDs.

Mike Hacker, another DU freshman, says that if bars were less lenient on letting kids in who are obviously using fake IDs that students simply couldn’t get away with it.

The problem? As Hacker stated, “I don’t think the bars would ever become too strict because then they’d lose a lot of profit. It’s kind of a ‘don’t ask don’t tell’ policy.”

However, a fake ID doesn’t always work. According to Menier, bars are typically much more strict at the beginning of the year cutting up students fake IDs and even occasionally bringing in the police. Copper added that sometimes a particular bouncer will be especially extra strict on students, which will discourage them for the night, but not much longer.

Though one would most likely think that it is just bars around campus that are having this problem, according to those interviewed, it is something much more widespread—students will use fake IDs near campus but also downtown and even at restaurants.

“There seems to be a pretty good ‘network’ of people who know who will take it and who won’t,” Menier said.

Day, when asked how the school planned on taking on the issue in the future, preferred to keep the information confidential, but he did say that there are a variety of ways DU intends to deal with it in the at present and in the future.

It was clear by many of Day’s answers to the questions that campus officials take fake IDs very seriously, and, though some adults on campus are still skeptical that it’s a problem—which Day believes is because “they don’t have to clean up the messes and deal with the issues that we do as the result of underage drinking”—it is quite clear that it is an issue on campus.

It is common knowledge that underage drinking has many downsides such as legal consequences, personal issues, and even death.

For some, it remains an outlet for fun, but for others it continues to be a problem that affects a significant percentage of the student population at DU, said Day. Though he made sure to point his uneasiness in speculating on such an intricate issue.

According to the students interviewed, the best way to solve this problem would be to simply lower the drinking age. The other solution suggested is for the local bars and liquor stores to tighten up on their efforts and stop admitting students with fake IDs into their establishments.

It’s hard to say exactly what the future of fake ids look like, but with the drinking age not being lowered anytime soon and student’s who want to party not likely becoming a dying breed, it would seem as though the issue were here to stay, at least for now.

* ALL names have been changed