Content Warning: mentions 
of death, homicide, suicide and 
graphic descriptions of bodily 
mutilation and trauma.
***
I remember the beauty of last 
week like it was yesterday, when 
all the fresh and crunchy leaves 
were still littered across the 
Diag and the wind lacked that 
extra bite. I frequently find it 
difficult to engage in my favorite 
pastime — stopping to smell the 
figurative roses — with such a 
busy schedule, but I had some 
time that day to pause and collect 
a few vibrant specimens from 
the ground, glowing in all shades 
between red and yellow. 
It’s not hard for me to imbue 
such seemingly bland moments 
with meaning, to make those 
tender seconds of inner solitude 
the defining parts of my day. But 
my ability to manifest meaning 
in otherwise ordinary occasions 
stems from something sinister, 
something completely out of my 
control that haunts me to this 
day. I remember the dim green 
of the traffic lights and the wet, 
shiny reflection on the road like 
it was yesterday.
No matter how hard I try, 
I can’t shake the look of the 
other driver’s face, the complete 
and 
total 
blankness 
that 
overwhelmed his softer features, 
dimly lit up inside his car by the 
luminescence of my headlights. 
I almost want to say that there 
was a look of fear on his face, 
which is predictable given that 
he haphazardly pulled out into 
my lane before noticing my car 
barreling towards his, but I 
might just be projecting. 
I remember thinking how 
unfair it was. How I spent the last 
five years building my defensive 
driving skills. How I got my 
permit the day after I turned 15 
and a half. I had a car before I 
had a license. There is something 

embedded in this silly invention 
by man, some kind of force that 
beckons me to the driver’s seat 
like a siren. There is nothing 
more electrifying for my soul 
than the hum of her engine. No 
one can cure me like my Hyundai 
can.
How unfair it seemed to me 
then, to know how much thrill 
driving gives me, and how much 
of it is ruined by clueless drivers. 
“Unfair, unfair, unfair!” I would 
scream as I approached my 
father covered in tears, for years 
on end, after yet another idiot 
on the road made me pay for his 
mistakes again.
Unfortunately, I didn’t have 
time to think about all the 
unfairness in the world. This 
man didn’t just pull out into my 
lane — he parked his minivan 
perpendicular to my path, and 
with me nearing a speed of 60 
mph, the already worrying 100 
feet or so of space between our 
cars was diminishing quickly. It 
was unfair, truly, that even with 
my stellar reaction time and the 
urgent strength in my foot as I 
slammed the brakes, it was not 
enough. 
I was just going too damn 
fast.
In all actuality, I don’t know 
what that guy went home and 
did. Maybe he kissed his wife, 
told his kids he loves them, 
and promised to quit his shitty 
job. But me? I spent months 
regressing into a sort of guilt, 
ruing the fact that I had been 
granted a second chance, and 
feeling unworthy because I 
didn’t know what to do with it.
***
I 
once 
took 
a 
forensic 
pathology class my senior year 
of high school where we were 
shown intensely graphic images 
from victims of asphyxiation 
to death by chainsaw to car 
crashes. I wasn’t strong enough 
to 
stomach 
one, 
just 
one, 
image from our class, where a 
pedestrian was plowed through 
by a sports car, which left his 

legs on the opposite side of the 
road from his torso, and a mildly 
interrupted string of intestines 
could be traced between the 
two. 
I can only picture what the 
scene of my accident would’ve 
looked like. How both of our 
faces would have been eaten 
by the airbags, bones snapped 
and twisted and exposed, even 
though I definitely had a higher 
chance of walking away from 
our encounter than he did. It 
would’ve been horrible — tragic 
to look at, tragic to think about 
and just tragic enough to make 
the next day’s front page. 
It may have only been a 
flicker in my mind, one second 
that wasn’t drowned out by 
instinctual thinking, but I had 
convinced myself that I was a 
dead man driving.
Any time I sit behind the 
wheel, 
I 
often 
have 
close 
encounters with destruction. 
I drive in a way that leaves 
my passengers shaking with 
adrenaline, slammed down into 
the seat from the force of my 
sharp turns and startled by the 
sudden yet smooth swerving in 
between lanes. And yet, with 
all the accidents I’ve almost 
had throughout the course of 
my life, never have I blanked 
behind the wheel so instantly 
as I did in that moment.
And yet, when the brake 
failed to stop my rear wheels 
from sprinting as I approached 
the 
minivan 
head-on, 
cars 
racing against me in both of the 
adjacent lanes, leaving me with 
nowhere to go, my detrimental 
habit became the thing that 
saved my life. I took my foot 
off the brake and slid it to the 
right, speeding up just quickly 
enough to lane split and avert 
death by just a few inches. 
I initially assumed I had 
learned 
nothing 
from 
my 
lesson, taking away nothing 
from the deathly learning curve 
and the addiction I have to 
endangering myself and others. 

I continued to drive with the 
same recklessness (and still 
do), but how could I not? That 
night, I had saved both of our 
lives, shooing away death with 
the same dangerous driving 
that all those news outlets warn 
you about. Despite the years of 
unfairness, I was in the right 
this time.
Still, the ego boost was not 
enough 
to 
overshadow 
the 
hollowness that followed my 
spirit around. I had averted 
death, but for what benefit?
For months, I grappled with 
my dilemma. What would leave 
a more foul stench in your 
mouth — dying a little too young 
or unfulfilled potential after 
being granted another chance? 
If you had told me that just 
enjoying the softness of grass 
beneath, or collecting pretty 
rocks to give to my friends later, 
would be enough to make me 
feel whole again, I honestly 
wouldn’t have believed you. 

I had met Death before, in 
hospital rooms and in movies 
and within myself, but it took 
me almost dying to realize I 
was shunning the friend who 
made my life worthwhile, who 
made me remember what I do it 
all for. 
We all have, I think, treated 
our friend the Grim Reaper a 
little too unfairly for all the good 
he brings us. Death was once 
considered a uniquely divine and 
honorable part of our lives, but 
the creation and medicalization 
of 
the 
death 
industry 
has 
transformed 
conversations 
about Death into cultural taboos, 
as we all just bite our tongues 
and sweep under the rug the 
most inevitable component of 
our collective experience.
*** 
Like any healthy obsession, 
my 
fascination 
with 
death 
started quite young. Instead of 
“Vampire Diaries” or “Gossip 
Girl” or “Wizards of Waverly 

Place” (which has earned me 
plenty of harassment from my 
roommates), I grew up on shows 
like “House MD,” “Bones,” and 
“CSI.” My exposure to death 
was precocious to say the least, 
but these heavier and moralistic 
shows helped to stiffen my 
backbone 
during 
actual 
troubling times, when I started 
having to say my last goodbyes 
to the people I loved.
And how ironic it is that my 
life pursuits continue to center 
around these topics. One of my 
truest passions — as everyone 
around me knows — continues 
to be anthropology. I tend to 
make it very explicit how much 
I appreciate the efforts of past 
hominins to preserve evidence 
of their existence. To slather 
paint on cave walls and to look 
after injured members of their 
clan — it’s all just too poetic to 
ignore.

Two months ago, I received 
an unexpected direct message on 
Twitter. It was from someone I had 
never met but vaguely recognized 
from the University of Michigan 
Twitter-sphere. 
“I think my roommate found your 
fake,” they wrote. “It kinda sucks 
btw.”
Said ID was not, in fact, my 
fake ID. It was my real Michigan 
driver’s license. It had disappeared 
somewhere between my apartment 
and Babs’ Underground Lounge 
after a night out about two weeks 
prior. I had been frantically looking 
for it ever since, tearing through 
my car, backpack and bedroom 
on a desperate mission to find it. 
In the meantime, I endured the 

humiliation of taking my passport 
to bars. 
I didn’t blame the Twitter 
stranger for assuming my ID to be 
fake. My driver’s license photo was 
exceptionally bad. I looked terrible 
in it — I had forgotten you were 
allowed to smile so it looked more 
like a mugshot than a driver’s license 
photo, and I was still hungover from 
the night before. I wouldn’t blame 
someone for thinking it was taken 
in a dorm basement with a digital 
camera from the 1990s. And ever 
since I turned 21, I’ve been paranoid 
that my license would be confiscated 
at Rick’s or the liquor store because 
there’s something about it that just 
seems so unconvincing. 
But there was something so 
stereotypically “college student” 
about that message that it was 
almost comical. It was a reminder 
of the absurdity of the fake ID 

phenomenon; they’re so ubiquitous 
that any driver’s license found left 
behind on the street is assumed to 
be a piece of fraudulent government 
documentation. 
Fake IDs have become almost 
synonymous with college life since 
the legal drinking age was raised 
to 21 from 18 with the passage of 
the National Minimum Drinking 
Act in 1984. The law was a bizarre 
quid-pro-quo that withheld federal 
funding for highways from states 
unless they raised the drinking age, 
meant to circumvent a provision in 
the 21st Amendment that prohibits 
the 
federal 
government 
from 
regulating alcohol. Four years after 
the National Minimum Drinking 
Age was passed, all states were 
compliant and 21 was the de-facto 
federal age.
Suddenly, 21 became the most 
important — and in my opinion, most 
arbitrary — social division on college 
campuses. Perhaps in recognition of 
how meaningless the divide really 
was, students almost immediately 
began trying to circumvent it with 
fake IDs. Utter disregard for the 
law became the norm. In one study 
published in 1996, 46% of college 
students admitted to using a fake ID 
to purchase alcohol.
For the most part, obtaining a 
fake ID is low risk and high reward. 
Minors can effectively purchase 
unlimited access to alcohol, weed 
or any other illicit substance. And 
it’s currently easier than ever to 
get high-quality “novelty IDs” 
online, usually produced in China, 
that can be swiped and scanned. 
Sure, there’s the small risk of it 
getting confiscated by the bouncer 
at Charley’s, but chances are you’ll 
make it past him just fine.
Still, using a fake doesn’t come 
entirely 
without 
risk. 
Under 
Michigan 
law, 
it’s 
illegal 
to 
“intentionally 
reproduce, 
alter, 
counterfeit, forge, or duplicate an 
official state identification card or 
use an official state identification 
card that has been reproduced, 
altered, counterfeited, forged or 
duplicated.”
And using a fake ID to “purchase 
alcoholic liquor” is punishable by 

up to 93 days in prison and a $100 
fine. Students have been arrested 
for 
possession 
of 
fraudulent 
identification before, often when 
police officers are waiting near the 
lines going into popular bars. In 
2010, immigration agents arrested 
2 U-M students and 1 MSU student 
after intercepting a package with 
48 fake IDs arriving from Toronto. 
Regardless, it still seems like many 
illicit 
transactions 
do 
proceed 
everyday and uninterrupted, as 
students hand their ID to the 
cashier at Campus Corner, perhaps 
verifying their “address” or “date 
of birth,” and go on their way. 
Fake IDs are so common that it 
can be easy to forget the insanity 
of the concept: Minors have the 
opportunity 
to 
significantly 
improve their social lives and 
overall college experiences by 
committing federal crimes on 
a weekly basis. This isn’t to say 
underage drinking is bad or that 
people should boycott fake IDs; 
I actually personally support the 
lowering of the drinking age. 
Rather, I’d argue that this fake ID 
phenomenon that’s accompanied 
by ample, even grave risk is too 
often taken at face value. 
If you don’t have a fake ID, 

there’s a good chance one of your 
friends does. One could go as far to 
say that the never-ending stream 
of parties, tailgates and smoke 
sessions that are so integral to 
campus life stand entirely on an 
informal network of fraudulent 
identities. And I think it’s time 
to confront this network for all 
it’s worth and all it does for this 
campus community.

These are the real fake IDs of 
the University of Michigan.
***
“I thought I was totally screwed 
and lost everybody’s money. I was 
freaking out,” a Ross sophomore 
explained. 
The 
student, 
who 
wished to remain anonymous due 
to fear of legal and professional 
repercussions, will be referred to 
as Eric.
Eric had placed a mass order 
of 14 fake IDs for himself and 
fellow Michigan students. He had 
meticulously 
tracked 
everyone’s 
information in a spreadsheet and, 
together, 
their 
false 
personas 
spanned the entire country — he had 
ordered “novelty IDs” from Illinois, 
Connecticut and Colorado, among 
other states. 
The entire process had gone 
smoothly until it was time to pay. 

Many forgers offer discounts to 
customers who pay with Bitcoin, 
and some of the highest-quality 
vendors have gone crypto-only. 
Eager to save a few dollars, 
Eric transferred the $650 he 
had collected from his friends 
into Coinbase, a popular crypto 
exchange platform. 
Then in June, the price of 
Bitcoin crashed. The hundreds 
of dollars Eric had collected 
evaporated. 
Eric was able to recoup his 
funds by exploiting a loophole 
in Coinbase’s system. “I called 
Coinbase and told them it was 
a ‘mistake’ that the money was 
put there,” he said. “I did some 
research, and they have some 
sort of rule where if you don’t do 
a certain amount of transactions 
within a certain amount of time, 
they think that the money was 
put in there by mistake or your 
account is inactive, and they give 
you your money back.”
Eric, thankfully, was able to 
complete the transaction through 
Zelle, albeit at a higher cost than 
if he had paid in Bitcoin. Soon 
after, Eric’s “novelty” Georgia ID 

The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
6 — Wednesday, November 16, 2022
S T A T E M E N T

Read more at MichiganDaily.com

VALERIJA MALASHEVICH
Statement Correspondent

In defense of my old friend, Death

The real fake IDs of UMich

HALEY JOHNSON
Statement Correspondant

Design by Ally Payne

Design by Serena Shen

Read more at MichiganDaily.com

REBECCA 
LANGE 

Alexander N. Halliday 
Collegiate Professor of Earth 
and Environmental Sciences 

LSA COLLEGIATE LECTURE

4:00 p.m. 

LSA Multipurpose Room

 SETTING THE STAGE FOR A
CATASTROPHIC

ERUPTION
SUPERVOLCANO

Wednesday 
November 16, 2022

A public lecture and reception; you may attend in person or 
virtually. For more information, including the Zoom link, visit 
events.umich.edu/event/95672 or call 734.615.6667.

