'Beer'T-shirts cause dispute

A parody of the popular "Purple Out!" T-shirts distributed every year during Homecoming spurred complaints from the Student Government Association and the Homecoming Committee.

Seniors Alison Crawford, Kate Moran and Stephanie Wallis approached the executive board of Phi Sigma Pi co-ed honors fraternity with the idea to sell the "I bleed beer" T-shirts as a fund raiser. All three are members of the group.

Traditional "Purple Out!" T-shirts read, "I bleed purple."

"We thought that [the project] could raise a lot of money," Crawford said. The profits from the sale would go to a Phi Sigma Pi-sponsored scholarship.

When the executive board opted not to sponsor the fund raiser, Crawford, Moran and Wallis fronted the money themselves.

"Since [Phi Sigma Pi] is an honors fraternity, they thought it would be as if all of us are drunks," Crawford said.

The three placed an initial order of 100 shirts about three weeks ago and sold out in less than a week, Moran said. "We were just selling them to our friends by word of mouth," she said. They all had to correct misnomers when selling the T-shirts that the fund raiser was sponsored or condoned by Phi Sigma Pi.

Crawford serves as social chair for the group, Moran as fund-raising chair and Wallis as public relations chair. Despite their association with the fraternity, all three denied using Phi Sigma Pi’s name during the sale of the shirts.

Because Phi Sigma Pi refused to participate in the fund raiser, the three will now search for a new scholarship to benefit from their project.

About a week ago, a second order of 80 shirts was placed. "Those are pretty much gone," Crawford said.

Controversy arose because the "I bleed beer" shirts closely parody the "I bleed purple" shirts produced for Homecoming by the Student Government Association.

The girls continued to sell the shirts, despite arguments that the shirts divided campus and ruined the spirit of Homecoming.

"It was almost as if they had mocked the ‘Purple Out!’ Homecoming tradition," said senior Krissy Schnebel, speaker of the Student Senate and member of the Homecoming School Spirit committee. Schnebel said she was particularly concerned that parents and alumni might confuse the two T-shirts at homecoming events.

"One thing I was surprised about was that people in SGA and on the Homecoming committee thought the shirts divided campus … Our shirt gets people excited about Homecoming in a different way," Crawford said.

"Our intentions were not meant to offend any individual or organization," the girls said in a statement released yesterday. "We plan to finish selling the few T-shirts we have left, not buy any more, figure out where the profits should go and enjoy Homecoming."