Senate hopes to emphasize brown and blue at bookstore

Two senators are working to put a little more spirit in Tufts' bookstore.

Freshman Tufts Community Union (TCU) Senator Zach Landau and sophomore Senator Jonathan Gais are sponsoring a plan to incorporate more chocolate brown and powder blue -- Tufts' official colors -- into the bookstore's offerings.

The senators would also like the bookstore to sell vintage Tufts clothing. "It's a great project that could stir up some school spirit," Gais said.

Landau said at other schools, the school colors were featured more prominently than at Tufts. "You can't get anything from Harvard that isn't crimson or white," he said.

But bookstore assistant manager Frank Moore, who orders merchandise for the store, said that he had only recently heard of the initiative through student workers.

The senators admitted that it has been difficult to make progress with University administrators, including Director of Dining Services and Business Affairs Patti Lee Klos and bookstore manager Ron Gill. "Progress has been slow with Patti Lee," Landau said.

The bookstore's reluctance to embrace the Brown and Blue Initiative, as the proposal is called, could be a result of the sales success of non-brown and blue products. Popular items at the bookstore include red sweatshirts, dark blue hats, and gray T-shirts embroidered with the word "Tufts" or "Jumbos."

This is not the first time Senators have attempted to increase school spirit with aesthetic changes. Last fall, former Senate Historian Allison Clarke and Senator Randy Newsom related project, which resulted in the installation of a Tufts seal above the stage in Cohen Auditorium. But other proposed changes, such as adding brown and blue to more campus buildings, have yet to materialize.

The two senators working on the current project insist that their proposed change in merchandise colors will be gradual. "We don't want to substitute, but rather augment the bookstore with brown and blue clothing," Landau said.

Since it was adopted in 1960, the school's color scheme has attracted a mixture of responses. "A complaint on Parents Weekend regarding school colors was a trustee saying the football uniforms were ugly," President Larry Bacow said.

While many consider Tufts lacking in spirit, University Professor and Former Provost Sol Gittleman, who has spent 39 years at Tufts and is currently writing a book about 50 years of Tufts history, disagrees. "We have terrific school spirit," Gittleman said. "This is as good as it gets."

Gittleman said that school spirit cannot be "legislated" or forced on students. "Then it becomes the Soviet Union," he said. He also suggested that school spirit can involve academic pride as well as athletics.

"The student who comes to Tufts is primarily an academic. At schools like Duke, alcoholic orgy is school spirit," he said. "Why can't there be academic school spirit?"

Landau and Gais are hoping students will make suggestions for their project, whose progress can be tracked on the Senate's website.