Short-shirted at the Bookstore

If you've been to the Penn Bookstore lately, you may have seen it. Tucked behind the $80 Tommy Hilfiger rugby shirts and the $17 two-toned stuffed animals is the store's newest T-shirt, proudly declaring "Not Penn State."

In the grand scheme of things at Penn, this is a fairly innocuous development. But it's a breakthrough nonetheless.

Ever since Penn built its big, bad Barnes and Noble bookstore, students and alumni have been offerred only the classiest of University apparel. There was the classic blue T-shirt with "PENN" imprinted across the chest. And for those really crazy students, there was the red T-shirt with "PENN" across the chest.

Nowhere was there a hint of the sarcastic sense of humor that you only hear on Locust Walk or at the Palestra. Nowhere was there a smidgen of liveliness that earns Penn the reputation of being the fun, party Ivy.

It's a shame. The T-shirt is like the modern day bumper sticker -- a way to tell the world about yourself without having to say a word. Whereas we used to only be able to tell outsiders through our T-shirts that we go to "PENN," we now can add that we don't go to Penn State. But the apparel at the Penn Bookstore indeed sends a message to all students at the University: This is not for you.

The price of clothing at the bookstore, where the cheapest T-shirts are $14.99, clearly shows that students are not the top priority.

Sharlene Sones of Penn Business Services -- which oversees the bookstore -- says that prices of apparel are so high because Penn students expect a higher-quality, more fashionable style of T-shirt than your average college student. She cites a study by Women's Wear Daily which singles out Penn students as being particularly fashion-conscious.

This is probably true, but there is a false assumption on the part of Sones and others who design Penn apparel. Students at Penn might prefer clothing from Bloomingdale's over Wal-Mart, but if they're looking for a regular Penn T-shirt, they don't care if it's 100 or 80 percent cotton. A $17 Penn T-shirt -- like the "Not Penn State" shirts -- is just as good as the $8 ones you can buy from entrepreneurial students on Locust Walk.

In regards to the lack of witty T-shirts in the bookstore, Sones makes a good point that the University must be conservative with its humor. I would not want Penn to go around printing shirts that say "Puck Frinceton" or with images of a tiger performing oral sex on Benjamin Franklin, as some fraternities designed several years ago.

But there's no reason why they couldn't make witty shirts for, say, Spring Fling or when Penn goes to the NCAA Tournament. It's what most other official University stores do, and it gives students a reason to keep checking out what's new at the bookstore.

Even at tiny Bucknell, the bookstore celebrated the team's March Madness appearance -- making up T-shirts when the Bison made the tournament and then even more when they won a game.

"Sales were phenomonal," said Hope Greiner, who oversees the purchasing of apparel at Bucknell. "We would order shirts one day, T-shirts would be printed the next day and they would fly off our shelves the next."

Sones says that Penn is thinking about generating more "whimsical apparel," but that she prefers to move "conservatively." In the meantime, it seems like someone should cash in on this dearth of affordable, appealing clothing.

Before it closed in April 2002, Steve and Barry's filled that niche on campus. It was the place to go for $8 sweatshirts and "Puck Frinceton" apparel. Hardly any university the size of Penn sells apparel at its bookstore without some sort of competition on campus, and it would be nice to have such a store here again.

But while the reasons for its closure remains a mystery, the very fact that Steve and Barry's is no longer operating could be a sign that a stand-alone Penn apparel store might not be profitable. After all, we're not as well-known as Harvard or as good at sports as Michigan.

If that's the case, however, there's no reason why local stores like CVS or the Fresh Grocer couldn't sell this type of apparel. Convenience stores often sell apparel at other college campuses.

One way or another, whoever taps into this market first stands to make a pretty penny. Until then, your more-fashionable-than-average Penn student will spend his $14.99 elsewhere.

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