Cate Edwards has one, and so does Alexandra Kerry.
T-shirts inscribed with the slogan “bush? not fine by me.” have become the latest fad for some Duke students in the last week. On the back, the T-shirt displays a list of numerical statistics that add up to 2004, which sophomores Ben Abram and Vijay Brihmadesam said explain why President George W. Bush should not be reelected.
Abram and Brihmadesam designed the shirts in an effort to encourage Duke students who oppose Bush’s reelection to voice their opinions.
The slogan stems from a similarly popular but controversial T-shirt that read “gay? fine by me.” that a group of Duke students distributed last spring to promote tolerance of alternative lifestyles on campus.
“We were thinking about different ways to get our message across,” Abram said. “We realized that T-shirts were a pretty effective way, seeing as the ‘gay? fine by me.’ T-shirts were so successful.”
So far, the anti-Bush T-shirts have also been a success—more than 700 T-shirts sold out in less than 15 hours at $7 each. Profits will cover the costs of renting vans to transport local voters to the polls on Election Day, one of Abram and Brihmadesam’s primary goals when they began the project.
“Our goal is not to convert people so much as to kindle beliefs that people already have,” Abram said. “We look to spark discussion.”
Abram said he encourages people to show their political beliefs by wearing the T-shirt, but he added that the T-shirts were not made to persuade on-the-fence voters to vote for Democratic presidential candidate Sen. John Kerry.
Although some Democrats on campus seem to have embraced the shirt, many Bush supporters disagree with the motivation behind the message the T-shirts carry.
“People should be a little more pro-’their candidate’ and show why people should vote for their candidate instead of why they should vote against the other candidate,” said junior Russ Ferguson, president of Duke Students for Bush. “We’ve got to say we’re voting for this candidate because we believe in these issues, and not because we think this T-shirt is funny.”
Ferguson added that he was glad to see activism on campus, but that he would rather see a debate about the issues.
With the election more than a month away, the effect that the T-shirts may have on students’ voting decisions is yet unclear.
“I don’t think it will have much effect,” freshman Jamie Kenyon said. “I think most kids here are smart enough to differentiate between rhetoric and facts.”
Encouraged by the T-shirt’s popularity, organizers have contacted students at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, North Carolina State University, North Carolina Central University and Appalachian State University in hopes of extending the fad to other campuses.
Get The Chronicle straight to your inbox
Signup for our weekly newsletter. Cancel at any time.