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Thursday, March 28, 2024
The Observer

Committee to unveil The Shirt 2014

The Notre Dame community will celebrate The Shirt’s 25th anniversary with free food, entertainment and student discounts at the unveiling ceremony at the Hammes Notre Dame Bookstore beginning at 4:30 p.m. Friday. 

Shirt unveil, Wei Lin
Wei Lin | The Observer


Junior John Wetzel, president of The Shirt Project, said the ceremony would spotlight members of the Notre Dame community with performances from student groups.

“The unveiling ceremony has been around since 2002, and it is always a great time for the community to come together,” Wetzel said. “The event will feature fantastic performers including AcoustiCafe, P-Fresh, the Bagpipe Band, Irish dancers, pom squad, Glee Club, Leprechaun Legion, the Notre Dame cheerleaders and the [marching] band.”

Wetzel said he expects a large turnout at the unveiling ceremony due to favorable weather and student discounts.

“We’re expecting a couple thousand students, alumni, faculty, staff and community members to show up for the unveiling this year, especially if the weather is as nice as predicted,” Wetzel said. “Students will also receive 15 percent off up to two shirts that they purchase at the unveiling ceremony.”

Marketing manager and senior Catherine Simonson said the local frozen yogurt shop Let’s Spoon and Barnaby’s pizzeria would provide catering.

In addition to the entertainment lineup and free food, Simonson said attendees could participate in multiple other activities before Irish coach Brian Kelly officially unveils the new Shirt at 6 p.m.

“We’re offering a couple different interactive booths, such as face painting, a guessing station allowing people to predict the color before it’s unveiled — which is all polled through Twitter, a photo booth where we’ll be bringing out all the previous Shirts and allowing people to try them on or hold them up and take pictures with their favorites — a really rare opportunity to see the whole collection — and a color stations allowing guests to design their own shirt templates.”

Along with expansions to the unveiling ceremony, The Shirt committee has broadened its media presence for the 25th anniversary, Simonson said.

“We’ve really bolstered our social media,” Simonson said. “We created an Instagram account over the summer and have used that as a central platform for growth. Right now, we’re finishing up a scavenger hunt we’ve been running for several weeks now via all of our social media platforms, including a newly designed website.”

According to freshman committee member Mackenzie Smith, the social media outreach aims to highlight the charitable impact of The Shirt, which helps to fund student activities.

“One of our goals for the year was to promote what exactly The Shirt Project is and where the money goes,” Smith said. “Most people don’t know that the proceeds from buying The Shirt go straight back to the students and to campus through our The Shirt Charity Fund and the Rector Fund.”

Simonson said she hopes the 25th anniversary edition of The Shirt will excite Notre Dame fans and sell in record numbers.

“This year’s Shirt takes on a whole different vibe than any of the previous years’ and we’re really looking forward to showing it off,” she said. “I’m predicting significantly higher sales than last year, which sold 156,000. I’d love to hit 160,000 or higher.”