I have drawers full of T-shirts. You know when you have a lot of something, you usually don’t need to continue to acquire more of it? But with T-shirts…

When you’re training a dog, they are usually rewarded for good behavior with a treat. It seems all we have to do as college students is inhale and exhale to get a T-shirt. Every event I seem to go to, the biggest selling point is “FREE T-SHIRTS!”

I’m just as guilty as everyone else with my T-shirt addiction, but in reality, how many do we really need?

For example, the amount of Eastern T-shirts I have acquired in only a year and a half in Charleston is more than I ever got in high school or even for most of my childhood. Eastern, what’s with the T-shirt obsession?

If I had brought every single T-shirt I own to college with me, I’d be able to count them all up and boggle you with the ridiculous number. However, I only brought the ones I wear on a relatively regular basis, and even that number is too many.

When I got to school two weeks ago, I started to hang up some of my clothes in my closet that needed to be hung up instead of folded in a drawer. I found myself left with a bunch of hangers and a ton of T-shirts that wouldn’t fit in my drawers.

Too. Many. T-shirts.

However, I hardly ever pay for T-shirts. What’s the point when every event I’ve gone to since high school is all about free stuff? I get it, we’re young adults who are mostly broke and what little money we do have generally seems to get spent on weekend shenanigans. Lucky for me, because I have an entire Eastern wardrobe I’ve barely paid one dime for. Free T-shirts are, for some reason, the ultimate persuasion on this campus.

They’re handy for going to the rec, cutting up into creative tanks and bumming around in, but how many do we honestly need?

I’ve come to realize it isn’t so much about the T-shirt itself. It’s all about having been at whatever event or belonging to whatever group is featured on the front. It might sound corny, but when you put on that T-shirt, you’re representing part of a bigger picture.

I know when I go home and wear an Eastern T-shirt out and about, subconsciously I feel proud to represent my school. I might be a very small component of the Eastern community, but by wearing the Eastern logo, I feel like I play a bigger role my personal representation of Eastern. Maybe this is the reason we all subconsciously love our T-shirts so much. Without saying a word to anyone, we can still portray something we’re a part of.

I know it sounds like I’m against this, yet I’m trying to justify it, and I suppose that’s true. In matters such as this, it should boil down to the idea of ‘all things in moderation.’ There’s no harm in sporting your Eastern colors with a T-shirt or two, but we as a school should really cut back. Students should strive to represent Eastern with their personalities and energy, not just another one of the 50 T-shirts they’ve acquired in their time here.

Robyn Dexter is junior journalism major. She can be reached at 581-2812 or [email protected].