Student Life

T-shirt frenzy: Students fabricate T-shirts to accommodate needs

Kimberly Witty, a seventh grader with a perpetual smile across her face and a positive attitude that earned her the nickname Kim Possible, was diagnosed with kidney failure last year. After countless doctor appointments and numerous tests, she discovered a compatible donor, her father, and will have kidney transplant surgery.

Senior Ashlen Lee and the other members of her church group decided to enlist the power of customized T-shirts as a way to show support for Witty on the day of the operation and to raise funds for post-surgery expenses.

“I think people get more use out of a shirt,” Lee said as to the reason why T-shirts was the fundraising route they chose. “It’s something they notice more.”

According to senior Alex Thompson, customized T-shirts have other functions.

“It’s like a social thing too,” Thompson said. “You see [T-shirts] in the halls [and] people are like ‘where’d you get that from?’ or ‘oh man, I wish I could have gone to that’ [or] ‘oh you went to that too.’”

Senior Nicole Vickroy, who made T-shirts for her history classes since sophomore year, said the reactions to her shirts are the best part.

“I wear my shirts all the time,” Vickroy said. “I wore the AP [U.S. history] one to church camp. It was like the easy button [and said] ‘All it takes a APUSH to start, making it easy since 1776’ and everyone liked it because it’s funny and [were] like ‘that’s so creative.’ Then people come back and ask me to make them a T-shirt and I just think ‘man, I’m good’.”

Thompson, like Vickroy, gets asked to make shirts which he said sometimes present issues.

“Someone will ask me about doing a shirt for a club and it’s hard to get what you should put on the shirt,” Thompson said. “Striking an idea [for] some clubs that [I don’t have] much to do with [is] hard.”

According to Vickroy ideas sometimes come from her surroundings.

“I was watching TV and saw a Staples commercial [that said] ‘that was easy’ and I was doing APUSH homework and was like ‘wow that’s creative’,” Vickroy said. “[For] the world history one, [I was] actually at a study group and we were like ‘we’re going to conquer the test like a Spartan’ and were like ‘that would be good for the shirts.’”

Further difficulties, according to Vickroy present themselves in money collections.

“Getting everything situated is very stressful,” Vickroy said. “AP world went over a lot easier because there was only one teacher [as opposed] to [U.S.] history [which] had two so that was tricky. What I do is make people pay with cash because checks are too hard to handle, and then I make them put their name on [an] envelope, put the money inside and put their size in there just to double check. You don’t get the shirt unless you pay.”

For Lee and the others this was not a problem as they have sold about 300 shirts which read “Team Kim Possible” on the front and “OPERATION: NEW KIDNEY” on the back and made approximately $2,400.