Author Spotlight
Michael Yi
*names changed to protect identities
On the morning of Lancer Day, senior Nancy Davis* pulled out her new fake ID at the liquor store register, ready to pay for her 24-pack of Michelob Ultras. She wasn’t nervous. After all, over 30 of her friends had fake IDs, and they had already figured out which places cared and which didn’t. At this store, as long as the code on her fake would scan properly, she was all set.
“There’s only a couple places that would call the police, but even QuikTrip doesn’t call,” Davis said. “They’re just like ‘get out’ and they’ll take your ID. So you just have to be careful about where you go.”
Possession of a fake ID in Kansas is a Class B nonperson misdemeanor, with a punishment of at least 100 public service hours and a fine of $200-500. But according to Davis, the social pressure to buy alcohol at East encourages students to get fake IDs, ignoring the possible legal repercussions.
“[Fake IDs] have gotten very normalized,” Davis said. “My sister didn’t get a fake ID until college, but every grade at East I feel just grows up sooner and sooner. People don’t really think about the repercussions when everybody around you has one.”
According to Davis, the most common way for students to get fake IDs is to contact somebody — typically a college student — that is placing an online bulk order through a Google Form. Customers typically join a Snapchat group chat for the order, and are incentivized through discounts to add more people to the group chat to increase profits for the person ordering.
“A lot of people will say, if you bring 10 people to this group chat, I’ll give you $20 off,” Davis said. “So a lot of people will try and get as many people as possible in the order so that they can make money on their own.”
On an Instagram poll of 325 students, 23% admitted to having used a fake ID. But Davis estimates that number to be closer to 80% in her senior class, and School Resource Officer Tony Woollen estimates it closer to 90%, based on the students that talk openly about their fake IDs with him in his office.
According to Woollen, East’s ingrained culture of drinking is responsible for the social pressures that drive students to purchase fake IDs. In an Instagram poll of 215 students, 24% of students reported having felt pressure to get a fake.
“The issue is that some people get fakes just to fit in,” Woollen said. “They’ve got friends that want to go to bars, or they just want to be cool and be able to buy booze.”
Junior Kylie Defour* doesn’t drink, but got a fake ID her sophomore year to buy her friends drinks for social events. As the oldest looking friend, she was pressured by her friends to be the first to get a fake.
“I wanted to be useful, and as someone who doesn’t drink, it kind of put me on the outside of things,” Defour said. “You’re not drinking when going out with your friends, so you could at least be helpful and buy alcohol for your friends. I think that was kind of my thought process.”
Junior Matt Wiley* doesn’t have a fake ID, but has been tempted to get one when prompted to join group ID orders with friends. According to Wiley, students may be encouraged to get a fake if they feel guilty about asking friends to constantly “buy for them.”
“[Fake IDs] are not a good thing, because it gives high schoolers access to alcohol, nicotine, stuff like that,” Wiley said. “But at the same time, part of high school culture is the parties and having fun. So I think that having fake IDs kind of makes having fun like that easier.”
According to Davis, seniors often feel like obtaining a fake is a social requirement for college, especially at schools with a reputation for a prevalent drinking culture. For Davis, a big factor in getting a fake ID was so she could get a feel for colleges apart from academics. She used the ID to visit college bars before committing to the college she’s attending this fall.
“It’s good for seniors to have so you can get the gist of what colleges are like, not just academically,” Davis said.
Woollen has noticed that fake IDs have become so normalized that students rarely fear legal consequences, with some students even showing their fakes to him to check their quality or asking for the SROs to recover fake IDs stolen from their cars. According to Woollen, the SROs see a fake ID every few weeks, but confiscate only one every couple of months.
“We have people that openly talk about it a lot, and so people look at us and go, ‘Why aren’t you doing your job by taking the fake IDs?’ Woollen said. “Well, we’ve got lots of stuff to do. I’m not trying to minimize that, but you know how ingrained the use of alcohol is in our learning community.”
According to an Instagram poll of 163 students that currently use fake IDs, 79% believe that the chances of them getting caught within a year is below 25%.
Hills Liquor manager Sara Sharp catches about four fake IDs a week, but believes the actual number of underage buyers is much higher. According to Sharp, the quality of fake IDs have improved in the last seven years, to the point where almost all the IDs she scans will show up as legitimate.
“These kids are spending hundreds of dollars on these fake IDs, so they will scan like a real ID,” Sharp said. “A lot of times you just have to see if they know their own birthday or where they live.”
When Sharp confronts underage buyers about their fake ID, she confiscates their ID. She’s been given conflicting information from Alcohol Beverage Control and the police as to what she should do with the pile of IDs she has.
“We’re supposed to give them to the police, but I’ve been told by the police that there’s nothing that they’ll do, which puts us in a problem,” Sharp said. “And then I talked to my ABC agent, and he said we’re supposed to give them to the police.”
According to former deputy and fake ID educator Allen Kisler, there’s nothing the police could do with the fakes but destroy them. Unless law enforcement directly catches someone with or using fraudulent identification, it’s difficult to charge them, making it even more rare for suspects to face charges.
“Unless the liquor store calls [911] on those people right there and there, nothing’s going to happen,” Kisler said.
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