Blake Brunson is an art history major at the University of Alabama, and while the rivalry between Auburn University and the University of Alabama often takes priority over other goals, it doesn’t in this case.

Brunson started a T-shirt campaign. She got the idea while reading Sue Monk Kidd’s “Dance of the Dissident Daughter.” In the novel, a character wears a t-shirt that says, “What if the military had to have bake sales to raise money and the PTA got the Pentagon budget?”

Brunson translated this idea into a campaign, in which students get to ask other “what if” questions that can challenge the way we think about things.

According to The T-shirt Campaign’s manifesto, “The t-shirt campaign is a grassroots-approach to challenging the imbalanced system of values we as a society have accepted.”

The manifesto also clarifies the group’s intentions, “The t-shirt campaign is a passive, yet powerful, movement that embraces subversiveness where subversiveness is needed. The point is not to reprimand past actions of a specific person or group. Rather, it asks we examine our present thoughts and actions and determine what a slight change might accomplish.”

Students at Auburn University decided to start participating in the campaign when the topic shifted from the war to the annual food drive that is a competition between the University of Alabama and Auburn.

On November 20, the last day of the food drive, Caitlin Sandley, a senior in Spanish, and several of her friends wore t-shirts that said, “What if beating hunger was as important as beating Bama?”

Sandley says, “I think this shirt is obviously based off the beat Bama food drive, or the beat Auburn food drive in Tuscaloosa. And those are kind of big campaigns to help with programs in East and West Alabama.”

Auburn’s Beat Bama Food Drive ended today. The campaign was started to provide food for the East Alabama Food Bank during the holiday season. This year’s slogan was “Exceed the Need.”

According to the Student Government Association’s website, one in five food pantries in the United States have to turn people seeking food away because of a lack of supplies.

Sandley also commented on camaraderie with the University of Alabama. She says, “There are students at Alabama that are wearing shirts like this today at Alabama that obviously say beating Auburn instead of Bama.”
“I’m a social work minor, and I care a lot about poor people, poverty, and hunger. I study the Millennium Development Goals a lot. The first one is eradicating poverty and extreme hunger, and so, that’s just something I know a lot about and care a lot about.”

The Millennium Development Goals were created by the United Nations in 2000 and address poverty by working toward universal education, environment sustainability, and the eradication of diseases like AIDS and malaria.

Sandley says about The T-shirt Campaign, “But it’s kind of a larger thing. Every week, they’re making a different shirt, and there are students at different universities, not just Auburn and Alabama.”

Members of the group have suggested making t-shirts about gay rights, women’s rights in Africa, and AIDS.




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