STATE COLLEGE, Pa. — At about 4:30 p.m. Friday, entering McLanahan’s Student Store and Penn State Room on College Avenue included hitting a wall of people about 15 feet inside.

They were surrounding a stand where three women were selling $9.99 blue T-shirts and handing out free blue ribbons from tin coffee cans to raise awareness about child abuse. Customers would approach the T-shirt stand, tell one of the women what size they wanted, grab a blue ribbon and move on.

The shirts read ‘Stop Child Abuse, Blue Out Nebraska.’ Therese Jones, a 2009 Penn State graduate, is hoping to turn this weekend’s game against the Cornhuskers into a Blue Out rather than the traditional White Out called for at Beaver Stadium.

‘We’ve been passing out blue ribbons all week on campus,’ said Jones, founder of the Blue Out movement. ‘We’ve been selling these blue shirts with proceeds to benefit Prevent Child Abuse Pennsylvania so we’re trying to get as many people to dress in blue tomorrow as possible.’

And customers of McLanahan’s have obliged thus far.

Jones said the store started to sell the shirts Thursday afternoon and has been selling them ‘like crazy since then’ as she estimates 6,000 shirts were sold as of about 5 p.m. Friday.

‘They’re ordering them as fast as they’re being printed at this point,’ Jones said. ‘So as many as can be printed before tomorrow’s game.’

Ashley Matz, a senior psychology major, was selling shirts at McLanahan’s Friday afternoon and has worked at the store since August.

‘We always get busy, but I think this is the busiest,’ Matz said.

Alumni are also ordering the shirts, Jones said, so McClanahan’s is expecting orders for months to come.

Jones traveled back to State College when the scandal picked up momentum earlier this week from her residence in Oakland, Calif. ‘I had a lot of frequent flyer miles,’ joked Jones, who started a Facebook event for the Blue Out movement early Sunday.

Jones said a cause raising awareness about child abuse can benefit Penn State, which has attracted negative attention all week.

‘I think the media has placed a lot of scrutiny on the officials involved in the scandal and it’s had a very negative impact on the Penn State community, in general,’ she said. ‘A cause like child abuse awareness should be unifying for everyone at the university, whether or not you believe Joe Paterno’s innocent or not.’

Laura Cully and Shannon Harrop, both freshmen at Penn State, bought shirts Friday afternoon at McLanahan’s.

When Harrop, a freshman bioengineering major, heard the shirts would go toward child abuse awareness, she decided to visit the store and buy one.

‘I think we just need work on turning people’s opinions around because right now people have a lot of things to say about us that aren’t good obviously,’ Harrop said. ‘But I think this game tomorrow is going to show people that we do care.’

Culley, a freshman communications, sciences and disorders major, said selling the T-shirts to raise awareness about child abuse is the first step in a long battle to restore Penn State’s reputation.

‘I think that the shirts are a step in the right direction, to show that we are in support of the victims,’ Culley said. ‘It’s not all about a football game, it’s also about what happened.’

jdharr04@syr.edu 

Published on November 11, 2011 at 12:00 pm

Contact Jon: jdharr04@syr.edu