Nine boxes containing over 500 T-shirts sat in Athletic Director Page Cotton's office for a week, fated to never be worn.
Since they were collected, it was decided that the T-shirts featuring a message deemed offensive by the university will be made into a quilt by members of United DePauw and others who take part in "Sew the Love" today from 1-4:30 p.m. in the Peeler Center. The Sew the Love event is intended to promote love and respect on campus.
Dean of Campus Life Dorian Shager said the decision to buy the shirts from their creator, senior Lewis Brown, and to give them to United DePauw stemmed from a decision made by university officials that the shirts should be used in some way.
"The shirts were not confiscated," Shager said. "It was a decision in the athletic department that, ‘Hey let's not sell these' and then had been finding a way to work with them to repurpose them into a positive outcome."
The funding for the shirts came from programming money from the Office of Campus Life, the Cultural Resource Center and the Athletic Department.
Shager said the funding is designated for cases that arise unexpectedly and will not take funding from other events.
"These are administrative accounts," Shager said. "So this isn't like the student government fund where each group gets allocated money. My fund is set up for things like this that we hadn't planned for. This is exactly what I use my money for every year, this type of event."
Lewis Brown was repaid part of the money he spent to buy the shirts initially, but will not receive compensation for the full amount. Brown declined to comment on the situation.
Sophomore Ronnie Kennedy arranged the Sew the Love event. Kennedy says he hopes the quilt the group creates will generate a positive meaning from one he views as negative.
"The juxtaposition of all those shirts with a message of love, we feel like is what this campus needs right now," Kennedy said. "Just having those two things side by side and having people able to see that shows the campus that this is the way that we want to respond to such a hateful and discriminatory message with love and acceptance."
Kennedy says the quilt will display a message intended to address significant issues on campus.
"The message that we're writing on the shirt isn't like ‘gay pride,' it's ‘no hate,'" Kennedy said. "That's the issue. It's about respecting people. That's the biggest problem."
United DePauw will be tabling in the Hub every day next week and will encourage individuals to sign a petition advocating for mutual respect.
"We're just asking people to sign if they believe that we at DePauw as a community love one another and respect one another," Kennedy said.
Along with the Sew the Love event and tabling, United DePauw will gather with groups across campus next Friday for a rally in support of acceptance and respect on campus. Kennedy says he hopes in light of recent events the week of "No H8" will work to solve some of the existing problems on campus.
"It happened," Kennedy said. "All we can do now is react. And we're reacting in the best way we can and in the most positive way."