 "Photo: Courtesy of Sarah Korn.")
Homecoming usually means tailgating, kegs-n-eggs parties, football and of course, having the perfect T-shirt to wear to the game. Senior Sarah Korn is celebrating homecoming for the last time as an undergraduate student and is determined to find that perfect T-shirt.
Korn and her roommates decided to design homecoming shirts and get them professionally printed. The shirts are going to read “U can suck our D” on the front, and show two helmets — the university’s and James Madison’s — with the words “don’t choke” written across the back.
To keep the cost per shirt to a minimum, the girls decided to create a Facebook group in an attempt to get more people to buy shirts.
“We were hoping like ten or 20 people would join so each shirt would be like $18,” Korn says. “Instead we had 400 people ask for shirts. I was shocked.”
Korn collected money from each person who wanted a shirt before she placed the order to the printing company to ensure that she would not have to front money for 400 people she did not know.
Korn says when she presented the T-shirt design to the company, they asked her if she had gotten permission to use the school colors and to put “UD” and “JMU” in the two helmets on the back. In order to use the school names, she says she would have had to get permission from both schools, which is a complicated process. Korn decided it would be easiest just to remove the letters from the helmets all together.
David Brond, vice president of the Office of Communications and Marketing at the university, says the process enabling students to get permission to use the university’s logo is a fairly simple one.
“When students want to use the schools name or something for their own use, we can give them permission without going through the whole process and paying the fee,” Brond says.
Although Korn thought the shirts would be able to be printed once she made the initial modifications, the company approached her once more, telling her that without the school’s permission, she would be unable to use the university’s school colors of blue and gold.
“I didn’t want to change the colors of the shirt,” she says. “But I really didn’t have any choice. I had promised shirts to 400 people and I had to get them printed.”
The shirts are being printed this week and will be light blue with black writing. The comment on the shirt remains the same.
“I hate letting one person down,” Korn says. “To let 400 people down is bad.”
Korn says some people were upset with the change in color of the shirt, but only two people requested their money back.
“Two kids were really upset and called me before the order had been placed, so I refunded their money,” she says. “Another kid called just a few days ago asking for his money back, but the order was already in so I couldn’t do anything.”
Most other students who ordered the shirts are happy with the final design.
Senior Jessica Goodman says she ordered a shirt from Korn because she needed a shirt for homecoming and wanted to help out her friend. Goodman was not upset with the color change of the shirts.
“I ordered it more for the design,” she says. “The color doesn’t really matter that much to me.”
Senior Aaron Schwartz says he ordered the shirt to show his school spirit, but opted for a refund when he found out about the color change.
“I wanted the shirt because it was blue and yellow and it turned out to be a combination of colors that weren’t Delaware,” Schwartz says.
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