U is for being Underage (How unfortunate)

If you’re like the majority of Ryerson’s frosh population, you may have decided it wasn’t really worth your while to spend another year in your home town.

Maybe electing to take extra high school credits wasn’t your thing, or maybe you just couldn’t wait to get away from a place that you’d spent a large portion, or even all of your life in.

Either way, you’ve wound up in one of the strangest positions imaginable: a legally underage teen living in a diverse community surrounded by students who will use any opportunity to drink.

There are some things almost every first-year should know or will quickly learn. People don’t get carded at rez or house parties, some bars are strict with IDs, some are not, and half the underage population of the campus is probably equipped with a fake ID. Butgenerally, the silver lining of being underage on campus is that there are many ways of getting your hands on alcohol.

The many techniques of how to get booze into residence and drink it too have been passed down over the years.

It’s also barely worth noting that if you decide to go out for a night on the town without an ID, and get carded, you will probably get kicked out (and remain sober to boot).

So if you don’t have the right ID – remember, Ontario health cardsdon’t work, even though they are photo ID. Your best bet is to either ask around to check if a bar IDs, or borrow an ID if you can find someone that looks similar enough to you.

Keep in mind that not everyone in first-year is underage, therefore at least one person on your rez floor should be making regular trips to the liquor store. Hint, hint.

In the end, an easy solution for those university students on the wrong side of 19 is simply to learn how to have fun while sober, which, believe it or not, is possible.

On a positive note, consider how fortunate you are to not have the privilege to damage your liver as quickly as your legal peers.

It feels strange to be suddenly thrust into a world of so-called adults and to have to be sneaky and underhanded about your drinking habits, but you’ll get through it.