JOHN THE OBSCURE ™
By John Ruch
© 2007
Tales Told Out of School III: UMass Amherst Dresses Its Students as Whiskey Bottles
I previously mentioned that my return to academe necessarily involved overlooking its “medieval inanities.” That is true. However, what really kept me away from the academy for the previous 14 years were two modern evils: its administration by sleazy businessmen whose profiteering lies and deceptions are the antitheses of the academic environment they supposedly shepherd; and the drunken rapists, thugs and all-purpose morons whose pickled bodies constitute the sizeable majority of student populations virtually everywhere.
It only took me a tad over a month back in school to run into both—in the form of a T-shirt.
After putting together the first two installments of this column series, I was feeling a bit of school pride for the first time since, oh, kindergarten. I thought I might buy a UMass T-shirt, and thus began noodling around in UMass Amherst’s online university store.
I was stunned to find a shirt, its style described as “Basic Jack,” that has the university name inscribed within a flourish-filled design that is highly similar to the decorations on the label of a bottle of Jack Daniel’s whiskey.
After all, the huge majority of UMass Amherst students are underage. Furthermore, in December, the university was rocked by the latest round of its now-trademark drunken rioting.
I foolishly thought this was worth pointing out to my new school. I e-mailed the university bookstore asking if the design is indeed based on a whiskey bottle, and if so, why.
The store director wrote back.1 He never denied that the shirt indeed is supposed to make UMass aficionados look like whiskey bottles. In fact, he never explained anything at all. Instead, he made one utterly untrue claim, issued a bunch of blither about everyone’s responsibility except that of his own store and university, and finally suggested there is something wrong with me for caring about it. Oh, and by the way, the product maybe eventually will be killed (after a bunch more are sold), but not because there’s anything wrong with it or anything I said about it.
In short, he responded like someone who works at a money-making corporation, not a non-profit academic institution.
The university is also a state institution. Does the state know it’s marketing whiskey to minors? I have several official complaints floating around out there, but I’ll make sure that one gets added to the list.
In the meantime, in the spirit of full academic inquiry, here’s my entire exchange with the store director. That includes my misspellings of “Jack Daniel’s,” which I’m sure UMass will teach me to correct. Meanwhile, I just got a refresher course in something I learned ages ago: universities love to question everything—except themselves.
Me:
I am a UMass Amherst student and was just browsing the online university store offerings. Among them I found a school T-shirt described as a “Basic Jack T-shirt,” which features the school name within a decoration similar to that on a bottle of Jack Daniels whiskey. It is listed as product number 030631.
As the vast majority of UMass Amherst students are under the drinking age; as the problems of drinking are detailed at length in student behavior policy materials; and as drunken rioting is a major campus problem, I am baffled about your licensing and offering of this product.
Please enlighten me as to why the university wishes to associate itself and its students with whiskey. Or is there some other meaning of the term “Basic Jack” and the similiarity [sic] to the whiskey bottle label?
Store Director:
John-
I want to assure you that we do not promote or condone underage drinking. Product designs and choices are purely individual tastes and should not be interpreted as endorsing the behaviors you mention. Personal responsibility is the issue as well as individuals making questionable choices. The product is no longer available and is not a style that would typically be re-ordered.
Me:
This makes no sense to me. The
question is not the “individual tastes” and “personal responsibility” of
purchasers, but the ethics and motives of whoever thought it was a good idea to
put the university’s name inside a faux whiskey label and sell it to
students--the majority of whom are minors. Why shouldn’t the university’s name
inside a whiskey bottle label--sold by the university itself--be interpreted as
an endorsement of drinking? What else should it, or can it, be interpreted as?
The product certainly is still
available on the web site and listed as such: https://www.bkstr.com/ProductDisplay/10001-10040-10571-4000000000000072363-1?demoKey=d.
[The day after this e-mail, the word “Available” was removed from the product
listing; however, it can still be ordered as of this writing.2] If
it's not a style that would be re-ordered, why was it ordered in the first
place?
I continue to find the product
shameful, antithetical to an academic environment and personally embarrassing
as someone associated with the school. Curveball answers that explain nothing
and dodge everything only deepen my disappointment.—JR
Store Director:
John
It is obvious that you have strong feelings about this issue and I will pass along your concerns to our buyer as well as the licensing office at UMASS.
Me:
I also won't be pigeon-holed as having “strong feelings”--an emotional issue--as opposed to making cogent rational and ethical points, which I did, and for insisting on the same from you in the context of an academic environment. I appreciate your passing along of my concerns. Your own lack of outrage is disgusting and vastly inappropriate for anyone involved in undergrad academe in any way.—JR
1 Several months after the publication of this column, I elected to remove the store director’s name in the spirit of statutes of limitations on asinine misdemeanors and the notion that people probably learn new ways from academic environments.
2
In response to my concerns, UMass Amherst eventually informed me that the shirt, which
somehow slipped through a university review process, will not be reordered; the
current stock will be removed from the store and the Web site; and that the
university’s licensing agent, Collegiate Licensing Company, will note on its
Web site that alcohol-related products in particular are inappropriate.
That came only after I sent seven
material e-mails to three different offices, including four separate ones
asking the critical question of why the university continued to sell the shirt
if it was seen as so bad it would not be reordered. I never got an answer to
that question. The shirt remained on sale in the online bookstore for almost
exactly three weeks after the store director told me it was not worth
reordering. Its page was removed from the site within 24 hours after I sent a
final complaint-fiesta of an e-mail to the university’s Auxiliary Services
office—and copied to the Chancellor’s Office. (It would be unnecessary for the
university to thank me for pointing out the error of their product, but such
thanks were conspicuously, assiduously absent.)
Of course, any normal person would
have given up after facing the innumerable passive-voice sentences denying
responsibility, vague or obfuscatory answers, lack of
responses, and so forth. I probably would’ve given up myself if I thought this
was just about one goofy mistake of a product. But, as I told Auxiliary
Services, the handling of the issue went to the core—for me—question of whether
the university is an academic institution devoted to truth, or a
public-relations-massaging, profit-motivated corporation. By and large (and
certainly from the start), the university acted like the latter until I
repeatedly and vociferously prodded it to do otherwise. I eventually did get a
couple straight, clear, logical responsible answers; it just took a three-week
siege of the ivory tower. The university’s mission statement says it exists to
“advance knowledge,” but I must admit it says nothing about speed or direction.
Update: Perhaps I’m being unfair—to
corporations. At the time I made my complaints, I also contacted Champion, the
company that made the actual shirt (but did not license the images). Champion
recently e-mailed me to say: “The Champion brand is disappointed that a logo
resembling a liquor brand would be associated with a college campus. This is not
a sanctioned message from Champion…. We are currently investigating the
approval process of our licensee that sells T shirts bearing the Champion logo
and requesting that this or any design resembling a liquor brand is pulled from
all college campus bookstores.”
Why was this simple, direct,
responsible response so easy to get from a profit-motivated private corporation
(that didn’t even see or approve the design) and so hard to get from a
non-profit public academic institution? It’s a sobering question.
In the meantime, UMass
Amherst brought a bunch more students up on charges of drunken rioting, and I
had a great deal of fun playing a video game with a pirate character I named
Basic Jack.
Posted Feb. 2, 2007. Updated Feb.
21 and 22, March
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