ASG clothing sale starts in time for football game

Diana Samuels

September 21, 2005

Students rummaging through their closets for something purple to wear to Saturday’s football game have a new option now that Associated Student Government is selling its $15 sweatshirts.

ASG launches the first major sale of its student-designed clothes tonight at First Friday. It is also selling student designed $5 shirts. The apparel also will be available Saturday at the football game against Penn State University, the first home game since students officially returned to campus.

Before today, the clothes had only been available through order forms and at Let’s Tailgate, 1805 Central St., the official retailer for NU athletic gear.

“If you look at Notre Dame or Michigan, they’ve got their sea of yellow, or sea of green, and we wanted to create that unity at Northwestern,” said Nishant Goyal, the ASG member in charge of the project.

Both the T-shirts and sweatshirts are purple, with a white and black design depicting the NU clocktower and The Arch above a depiction of the Chicago skyline. A large block letter ‘N’ and a Wildcat logo are in the center, and it reads ‘Northwestern’ in capital letters below the design.

Weinberg senior Hyeong-Rak Youn, who was selected in a May contest to design the shirts, said he took an already-created image of the Chicago skyline from Let’s Tailgate and added NU elements.

While he didn’t have any experience or real interest in graphic design, he received an e-mail about the contest and created a design using the Microsoft Paint program.

“I figured, ‘Why not make it something I’d actually want to wear?'” he said.

Not many students have bought the shirts at Let’s Tailgate, said co-owner Cindy Gaborek.

Gaborek said her store would make very little money on the shirts, but she hopes they will attract more business.

“We’re doing this to help students out,” Gaborek added. “Our goal at Let’s Tailgate is to get more students wearing purple, having spirit.”But she expects better sales with the weekend’s football game and First Friday, an event celebrating the start of school with a barbecue, movie and fireworks at Norris University Center.

“It needs to catch on more,” she said. “This is a big week.”

Gaborek said she hopes to sell a few thousand shirts this year.

Goyal, a Weinberg sophomore, sent order forms to listservs and handed them out through the Residence Hall Association and the Residential College Board. A link to the order form will soon be on the HereAndNow Web site, he said.

Goyal said the clothing items are selling well.

“It hasn’t been very long, but the number of order forms coming in is increasing,” said Goyal, a member of ASG’s Student Services committee.

Let’s Tailgate also will sell them at the student entrance of all home football games.

Goyal added he plans to sell them at other large campus events, too.

Goyal said he first envisioned the $15 sweatshirts when he was talking to another student who didn’t have any NU gear because the clothing at Norris Bookstore was too expensive.

Hooded sweatshirts range from about $20 to $55 at Norris and between $35 and $60 at Campus Gear, 1717 Sherman Ave. T-shirts at both stores average about $15.

ASG hopes to hold another design contest this year, Goyal said.

“The idea is hopefully to make this into a tradition,” he added. “We’ll see how this year goes. So far, so good.”

Reach Diana Samuels at [email protected].

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