What makes a personal check valid?

cyphr

So the residence hall I'm an RA in has this program called Study Bucks or whatever where we're supposed to give residents these "checks" that they can redeem at an auction at the end of the quarter. Blah blah blah. Anyways, we got these things in our mailboxes today, and I'm interested at the number of similarities they have with a real personal check. Included are:

The name of the residence hall and its address in the upper left hand corner
A line for the date in the upper right hand corner
A "pay to the order of" line with $100.00 in the amount box
"One Hundred & 0/100 Dollars" on the line below that
"OSU Bank of Study Bucks" in the middle-ish of the check
A signature line
Some (fake) routing and account numbers

So my question is, what is necessary for a personal check to be valid? I'd find it quite amusing if they were giving out slips that could actually be cashed, even though no one would do that because of all the hassle and legal stuff I'm sure you'd have to go through.

Raiden333

If you've got some spare time, this is some entertaining related reading:

http://www.goodthink.com/writing/view_stories.cfm?id=11&page_id=2

Descendant X

Raiden333 wrote:

If you've got some spare time, this is some entertaining related reading:

http://www.goodthink.com/writing/view_stories.cfm?id=11&page_id=2

I suppose that's why every Publisher's Clearing House "cheque" I've ever seen has "This is not a cheque" printed on it somewhere.

What a wonderful, heartwarming story.