IRS is an acronym that you have been hearing people talk about ever since your very first frosh week, but do you even know what it means? The Iron Ring Stag has been a tradition at the University of Waterloo for a very long time and is the huge party that is thrown by your graduation committee, to celebrate getting your iron ring. Even though IRS is one event, the majority of students group the pre-ceremony party, the Iron Ring Ceremony and the Iron Ring Stag into one jam packed celebration weekend.
When you mix celebration and college students you typically end up with alcohol as well. IRS celebrations are usually conducted by each class and start early in the morning. The GradComm assistants are usually on hand to run the party and cook pancakes for the participants who are normally dressed in ridiculous costumes. Once the classes are well lubricated, they head to campus and visit profs who have influenced them over the years.
This would be great and appropriate if all of the participants conducted themselves in a proper manner, however, over partying causes people to act inappropriately. Each year there is one or two things which happen that cause the IRS celebration to be questioned by administration, jeopardizing the fun that future years can have.
In the past few years such things as stealing dinosaur bones, breaking windows and disrupting classes from other faculties put the IRS celebration at risk. Many of the attitudes shared by the upper years is, “I’m never coming back here so I don’t care”. Please be aware that you still need to graduate, and any altercations with the authorities can cause problems with graduation or even licensing opportunities with the PEO. The faculty has done a few things to try and mitigate the partying that happens, such as moving the IRC to Saturday from Friday and mentioning that these types of celebrations would not be tolerated.
The IRS weekend which is a tradition at many schools across Canada, has been put in jeopardy at Waterloo, due to the stupid actions of a few people. Therefore as someone who will have his IRS in two years, I urge you to have a good time and celebrate your graduation, but please be smart and don’t do anything that might jeopardize my future IRS weekend.
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