By Zachary Roman
“Rye High” has a whole new meaning.
Last week, Ryerson signed a deal with Live.Laugh.Bud.—to provide free weed to any student who votes for one of the new student governments and promises to forget the Ryerson Students’ Union (RSU) ever existed.
The collaboration is titled RU HIGH and features weed strains grown right here at Ryerson’s Urban Farm. Plants are cross-bred at Ryerson’s Fat Blunt Innovation Zone to find new and exciting strains for students and professors.
Once a suitable strain is created, it’s sent out to focus groups—consisting of whichever students are randomly standing in Kerr Hall Quad that day—for testing and naming. Then, the plants are grown at a greenhouse managed by the Urban Farm. Finally, they are hand-trimmed and delivered to Live.Laugh.Bud. by Greg from the maintenance department.
All you have to do after you vote is show your OneCard to the cashier at Live.Laugh.Bud, located just beside the Yonge Street 7-Eleven. They’ll use your student number to confirm you’ve voted, and if you have, you’ll get 3.5 grams of the newest RU HIGH strain “Blue and Gold Dream” for free.
Other available strains are “Eggy Kush,” “Urban Campus Poison, “Kerr Hall Quadruple A” and “Alaskan Thunder Ram.”
“We’ve run the numbers and what we are doing here with the Urban Farm and Live.Laugh.Bud. is by far the better financial decision,” said Ryerson president Mohamed Lachemi.
“Instead of fighting the students in court and spending tons of money on lawyers, we’ll get them high with crusty dispensary weed and they’ll just let this whole thing blow over.”
There are currently four groups vying for your vote and so far only one of them has broken campaigning rules—which I suppose is a start, considering the only way people ever campaigned before was by giving out Eggos.
The university also has a rule where students aren’t allowed to give away free stuff for votes during campaigning. This collaboration with Live.Laugh.Bud. goes against that, but luckily for Ryerson, they are exempt from their own rules.
The four teams are: the Ryerson Undergraduate Students’ Alliance (RUSA), Ryerson Graduate Students’ Union (RGSU), Ryerson University Student Collective (RUSC) and Ryerson First.
As The Eye previously reported, the four teams are expected to campaign over the next week leading into March 4 and 5—the days that students can cast their votes using an online forum, and in person in the RCC lobby and the second floor of the SLC.
Ryerson First was the first new group to break the rules. Coincidence? Definitely not.
Some students took advantage of the new promotion and they appeared to be in high spirits.
“I voted for Ryerson First, because it was the obvious first choice,” said Fred Icktable. “The name says enough. I didn’t need to look into it.”
Other students said they had never even voted in a Ryerson election until this promotion started.
“I love to complain on Facebook about the RSU wasting my money,” said Chip Ocrit. “But I’m just one person—my vote never counts for anything anyway.”
Live.Laugh.Bud. has enjoyed a hefty increase in sales as a result of its new partnership with Ryerson. Store owners report that students come in for their free weed and leave with a $450 weed-infusing coffee machine on a regular basis.
“We have an undeniable advantage over our competition thanks to our partnership with Ryerson,” said Mary Jane, advertising manager at Live.Laugh.Bud. and former D.A.R.E. volunteer. “It’s almost too easy. Life is good as a legal drug dealer.”
Jane admitted she got into the legal weed business after taking a weed yoga class. She purchased the store with some money she inherited from her rich uncle.
“I used to be a wine mom and I genuinely supported the War on Drugs. But after I realized weed doesn’t give me a hangover, I had a change of heart. I knew I could profit off of it so easily.”
However, life for your friendly neighbourhood drug dealer hasn’t been so good, unfortunately. Many local plugs say they are seeing a drastic decrease in sales thanks to the plethora of legal alternatives around the school.
“I used to know how all my buyers’ classes and love lives were going,” said Guyler Triffen, a local weed dealer and aspiring MDMA dealer. “Now students look at me like we weren’t best friends last year.”
Ryerson’s collaboration with Live.Laugh.Bud. will be going on until March 6, when election results will be posted. No matter what, this new student government will be seeing a higher voter turnout.
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