ID Policies

by Brett Waters

It's Saturday morning and students over twenty-one years old, campus-wide, are discussing their plans for the night -- who's going where and who's drinking what. All of these students are planning the fun they're going to have, with the exception of one group within the over twenty-one student body. This group of students has a different problem to worry about that day: not only do they have to plan what they're doing but also have to plan how they are going to get a ten minute car drive to get alcohol for the night. Did I mention that this other student body represents the entire out of state population. With Potsdam being so close to the Canadian/ U.S.A. Border, it’s not unusual to see that there are many Canadian born students that attend the campus. However, most Canadians, if not all, have trouble with presenting their drivers licenses as proper identification to buy alcohol. Not only are Canadians not getting IDs accepted, every out of state person who presents an ID will be turned down. Many people may not see this as a problem as it doesn’t directly affect them, but to the Canadian and other out of state population it is.
I don’t raise concern for this issue so people can have pity on the over twenty-one Canadian students. I argue this to help the town become more self-reliant. If the town is struggling now to take care of itself, how is it going to be ten years from now? I believe that changing the way they see Canadian and out of state IDs, is one step to helping this town grow. There is a great opportunity being lost here, and this concern I have will only help the business people of the town realize what they’re missing out on.

With much of the Canadian student body being of legal drinking age, it becomes extremely frustrating to walk through the town of Potsdam wondering if your ID will be accepted. Being involved in this issue first hand, I can tell you that it's an inconvenience and highly agitating. It feels like we're being punished in a sense, while we’ve done nothing wrong. Not only is this issue frustrating to the student, it just doesn’t add up in a business sense. Turning down a Canadian ID means that the business is turning down a paying customer. No business owner will ever tell you that he wants to turn away the chance to make money. So, if there is money to be had within the situation, why has it gone unchanged? Why don’t local shops accept our IDs?
In the past, Canadian IDs were very easy to alter. Scratching your ID with a sharp knife and writing in your own number was easy to do and hard to detect by the naked eye. Also, gaining someone else's ID who looks like you is very easy to do. Both of these options hold a very high risk to Canadians going to school in America. Scratching an ID card is alteration of a government-issued article. The penalty for doing this could result in jail time and a fine or simply just a fine. But the easier and more common way of ID fraud is to simply obtain an ID with someone who looks like you, but the penalty for this process is higher than ID altercation. Identity theft penalties can range from one to thirty years in prison (Court of New York State). So with the penalties provided and the risk of being deported and stripped of our education, why would Canadians take on choices such as this?
Even so, this isn’t a valid reason to turn down our IDs. The drinking age in the U.S.A. is twenty-one. This means that students should technically only be able to drink in their senior year. There is no way that the students drinking at parties are all of age, but if you look at their ID it will tell you otherwise. What I’m saying is that for merchants to turn down Canadians for having fake IDs, then the same must be put into place for Americans. Canadian IDs have been overhauled in the past year and in-turn have become one of the hardest to alter. The new enhanced license looks the same as the older versions but has the words “enhanced” in the title and the short form for Canada, CAN, is the corner of the ID. A chip that has a radio frequency identification number is imbedded within the ID. This chip is recognized by the American U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) network. Government officials are accepting this ID as a means of passage into a country, so why is a local grocery store turning them down? If the issue of the ID being fake is the store's reason for not accepting them, then that is no longer a strong enough argument to deny us from buying alcohol at the store.
It's true that false IDs are common within youth today. Fake IDs carry a risk to both the card holder and the store owner. It’s a risk to carry a fake ID as a minor because of the legal penalties that follow. If in fact you are caught with a fake in your possession, the penalties can be as serious as a year in jail, a thousand dollar fine, or both (wikipedia). Also, the fine for businesses caught accepting a fake ID could be a fine from the Liquor Control Board or a loss of the liquor license. In both cases, the risks are high and make it really clear to see why businesses go through lengths to protect themselves. However, if businesses are worried about selling to a fake, then why aren’t they developing a system that is 100% fool proof to accept or deny these IDs. Just looking at the ID is not always the best way to determine whether the ID is real. There are many different ways that assure the authenticity of an ID. Many companies across North America have been developing hand held technologies that can check authenticity of an ID by reading its bar code. If an ID has been tampered with in any sort of way, this is a solution to stopping the use of fake identification.
Also, there is a book that's printed every year that shows each ID that is offered in North America. Within the book, you can find certain criteria that an ID has to have in order to be a proper government-issued ID. Yet, the easiest way to detect a fake ID might be the simplest for the store owner. All ID cards are printed with holographic symbols or writing which is easily seen by putting the ID under a black light. The black light shines a different type of light on the ID which then makes the symbols more obvious to the eye, as opposed to regular lighting. So once again I asked why don’t local stores implement these methods? Some may argue that the price of researching these methods might be too high for the shop or business but what’s more expensive: adopting these ways of ID checking or losing business forever?
Not only are the stores creating a bad name for themselves within the over twenty-one Canadian population of the school, they’re missing out on money they could be making. Every weekend it’s not uncommon to party and drink. As athletes in our off-season, this is the only time we have to party. So, the time is taken advantage of. The amount of money spent on alcohol would probably shock the average person, but more shocking is to hear that a business doesn’t want this money. Even though alcohol’s profits aren’t exactly high for the store owner, the possibility of someone buying another good when they’re in the store should be enough reason for a store owner to change the practices of accepting or denying IDs.
With many students barely being able to afford tuition, it’s not uncommon to see students that walk into town to get their needs. Cars are expensive to have at school, especially for Canadian students, on top of all other costs. School tuition for an out of state student is $12,870 and for an international student it's $15,000 (SUNY Potsdam webpage). Unless students have income help from other parties, these fees will take a full summer of work just to break even. Mostly every student has taken out a loan to pursue post-secondary education. Dealing with being in debt and the pressures of school is hard enough on a student let alone adding the cost of car insurance. The average rate for car insurance for drivers under 25 is $1,837(State Farm). Therefore, most students do not have vehicles on campus. You might ask, what's the problem with not having a car on campus? Well, the closest store to buy alcohol within “walking distance” is the store that does not accept out of state or Canadian ID's. Not only is that an inconvenience, it goes against the movement of the world today. The world is trying to go green, and driving cars to Wal-Mart and back isn’t exactly “going green”. So now we have the little issue of ID acceptance connecting to something much bigger like global warming.
Potsdam is a small community and relies on small local businesses. These businesses and stores will not continue to run if they don’t start competing with the big names of retail business. As a student without a car, I always find myself walking to town for my needs. however, one thing I know I can’t walk into town to buy is alcohol. In the case of buying alcohol, you can find me going out to Wal-Mart. Although this is still helping some people within the town, I would much rather support a local store and keep the historic downtown running. Wal-mart had a total revenue of 404.16 billion dollars for the year 2009 (Wal-mart.com). If you add up all the stores within the Potsdam area and calculate their total revenue for the past ten years you'll find the number to be monumentally smaller. Big name stores can rip a town like Potsdam apart, or is it the town doing the damage to itself?


Sources:
www.wikipedia.com
http://news.ontario.ca/mto/en/2009/05/about-ontarios-enhanced-drivers-licence.html
www.potsdam.edu
http://public.leginfo.state.ny.us/menuf.cgi
www.statefarm.ca