More than 8 months ago, Penn State held a contest: design the next “White Out” shirt, and win something.  I think it was free textbooks for a semester, or maybe football tickets.  Either way, the genesis of the recent “controversy” is in events which took place more than half a year ago.

I say controversy because this past week, the Daily Collegian ran a story in which it was revealed that 6 entities had lodged complaints against Penn State, deeming the shirt design too much like a cross, and that it promoted Christianity, I presume. Leading the charge was the Anti-Defamation League, a national group which rallies against anti-Semitism and Penn State Hillel, a Jewish student organization.

Michal Berns, Hillel president, said she did not purchase the shirt because of the design.

“I know I wasn’t the only one,” Berns (junior-media law and policy) said. “As Hillel, we’re not going to complain. I don’t think we have a right to say what [the university] should or shouldn’t be doing, but in my personal opinion I think it looks like a cross.”

Emphasis mine, and yeah, you did, apparently.

Okay, I, too, am a member of Hillel, and yes, I suppose the shirt looks like a cross…in that it features an intersection of horizontal and vertical lines.  So do power lines, and lower case t’s.  You’re free to not buy the shirt.  Hell, I didn’t buy it either, but my argument surely wasn’t built on any religious moral grounds. I just thought the design was pretty cheesy, and particularly disliked the font on the back of the shirt.  And in practice, isn’t it ridiculous to spend another $15 for a shirt after spending close to $250 on tickets, when the only requirement is that you wear white? I ended up going to the Iowa game in a plain white undershirt–over about 4 layers, of course.  But that’s not the complaint here. The complaint is that the shirt looks like a cross, and this is certainly a big deal, or something.  Look, it’s not the best design, but it’s not like there’s a picture of Joe Paterno hanging from the cross or anything (though that would be awesome). Look, the stripe down the front and back mirrors the stripe on the Penn State helmets. You know, plain white with a stripe down the middle? That’s all this is.  And it doesn’t hurt to put the name of your school on the shirt, and, where the hell else would you put it if not across the chest?

This clearly isn’t meant to promote religion in any way, and nobody noticed this at all–not when it was sent to the Daily Collegian, not when the Collegian selected it as a finalist, not when the students voted it as the white out shirt–not when it was printed and distributed to 30,000 students and fans.  When confronted with the complaint, any reasonable person would say “huh, I guess it does look like a cross” and move on, because obviously there’s no religious intent involved with this design.

But hey, the article was just in the Daily Collegian, right?  So if you live outside of State College, or have no connection to Penn State, there’s no reason you’d be affected by this situation, right?  Of course not. Sensing a chance to stir up a controversy, Fox News jumped on the story, and exposed the “issue” to the rest of the country. However, most importantly, they managed an interview with some of the key players in this whole affair.

Barry Morrison, regional director of the Eastern Pennsylvania-Delaware region of the Anti-Defamation League, said the organization contacted Penn State officials last month after receiving a complaint regarding the shirt.

Morrison said the similarity to a cross appeared to “inadvertent and unintentional,” but he acknowledged that some could take exception.

“This is not intended to be a cross,” he said. “But some people clearly saw this connection and decided to complain about it.”

Okay, so you’re admitting that the cross design was, as you put it, “inadvertent and unintentional,” and yet you still decided to take offense?  What the hell were you planning to accomplish, first of all?  The shirts have been printed for months, and have served their purpose, being worn to the Iowa game before anybody, apparently, drew the conclusion that intersecting lines look like a cross.  But again, I don’t just question your motives, I wonder what in god’s name they are?  You point out that the shirt looks like a cross, and I suppose I can understand why you personally, or people like you wouldn’t want to wear that shirt, though it’s obviously not endorsing Christianity or belittling Judaism.  But did you want nobody to be able to buy the shirt, or wear it, or anything? Did you want Penn State to round up all the shirts and burn them?  There was no obligation that every student had to wear the shirt to the Iowa game, it’s not a uniform requirement for Penn Staters.

Thankfully, at least one person Fox News interviewed has a brain.

Bill Mahon, vice president for university relations, said six people have contacted Penn State to voice their objections to the shirt’s design.

“Six complaints is not a controversy,” Mahon wrote Foxnews.com. “Students submit shirt designs to the student paper each year. Students then vote for their favorite design and they are sold in the campus bookstore.”

Mahon said the design was based on the single blue stripe on the football team’s helmets and will not be pulled from store shelves as some have asked. “The shirts have sold out and no changes are planned,” he said.

The emphasis is mine, and while I think tha

t shirt design was horrendous and didn’t vote for it, obvious ly the majority of Penn State students disagreed with me.  Although I’ll give you a little bit of insight here, seeing as I worked for the Daily Collegian at the time: there were about 25 shirt designs that were whittled down to the final four (clearly, design “B” should have won) and the winning shirt was not among the top ten or so designs.  I wish I had some of the submissions, because they were a lot better than this one.  But I digress.

This shirt design was by the students, for the students, of the students, and guess who didn’t have any problem with this shirt? The students! Literally every single student interviewed by both the Collegian and Fox News has said this is a non-issue, and trust me, if any one of them had said anything but that, it would’ve been reported.  There have been a half dozen or so letters to the editors of the Daily Collegian about the shirt, and every single one said the same thing: nobody cares, and please tell me we’re not this sensitive.  And trust me, again, if anybody had said that they were offended, it would’ve been headline news.

There are 40,000 students at Penn State, there’s an alumni association with close to 150,000 members, and probably a couple million Penn State fans scattered across this country.  Six of them complained. SIX!  This wasn’t an issue until last week! I don’t know a single person, Jewish, Christian, atheist, or anything, who objected to this shirt on religious or moral principles, or who took offense to it.  So why the hell is this a story, again?  Oh, right.

“Honestly, I think it’s basically people just trying to stir up controversy over something that’s ridiculous,” Mangus said.

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