College Decals, Logo-wear, etc.

Parent Cafe
1

<p>Is it just me, or does anyone else consider our national practice of displaying a college decal or two, or three, in the rear window of the family car to be an unseemly form of boasting? I know it’s a part of our culture, and anyone who does it is safe in thinking, should this thought occur to them at all, that everyone else does it. If you display a big “Yale” back there, is the implicit message “and where does your kid go?” If you like to do it, how long are you allowed to keep it there? Until graduation? As long as you own the car? If you buy a used car with “Dartmouth” on the rear window, do you have to scrape it off?</p>

<p>I’m aware that this custom exists in the context of a more general love of status-markers. I see sweaters with the label on the outside, car insignia that give details of whats under the hood, little oval stickers that suggest the location of a vacation home, etc. I’m old enough to remember when it was only appropriate to wear your club tie or shirt while at a club function: now, you apparently don’t even need to be a club member. Ditto for college sweatshirts: I’ve gotten used to seeing “Oxford” and “Harvard” on the most unlikely chests.</p>

<p>I suppose that it isn’t all that different from driving an ostentatious car to advertise your income to complete strangers, except that you do get a powerful motor, corinthian leather seats, and individual climate control for your money, where the decal is just bragging rights. Or is it rationalized as “school spirit?”</p>

2

<p>I think it’s funny (either funny ha-ha or funny ironic, take your choice) when the car decal says something like East Jabypp State College! (Really - is some level of irony intended here, or not?)</p>

<p>As for the sweatshirts, I often ask, “Did you go there, or did just the shirt?” 99 times out of 100 it’s just the shirt!</p>

3

<p>Bill Mayher, I think, has a funny paragraph in his book where he wonders about a car with 3 “East Jabypp” -type decals and an MIT, which launches a reverie about the genetic lottery.</p>

4

<p>Idler, that’s why I’m going for the discreet and non-permanent car tag holder thingy :).</p>

5

<p>One of the best changes in rear window decals I’ve seen recently was the student at the University of Delaware who rearranged a couple of letters to: Unaware of Diversity. Pretty clever!</p>

6

<p>For what I’m paying for sending my son there, I am going to wear as much USC logo stuff as I can get on me. </p>

<p>What amazes me is that at the place where I work out here in Madison (the Princeton Club, as a Rutgers guy I am not buying any of their logo clothing) are the number of people wearing tees and sweatsuits with UNC on it. None of them I have asked about it actually went there.</p>

7

<p>I still think, as I posted before, that we need a “car tag holder thingy” that reads: My other car has a Princeton decal</p>

8

<p>Five years ago, my son who was a senior at a highschool whose archrival had a college attached to it by the same name as that archrival highschool, put together a senior prank where they got a large batch of car decals with the name on it. They stuck it on all of the faculty cars and as many of the senior cars that they could. Our car which was at the school at the time was not exempt though S was one of the pranksters. To this day we have that danged decal on the car, which is not easy to remove, and I get questions about it all of the time, as no one in this family has gone to this school. H sees more problem with it than wearing a sweatshirt from an unrelated college, a number of which we own. My younger kids wear all kinds of name apparel totally unknown and urelate to them as they are hand me downs or give aways.</p>

9

<p>My Senior D asked if she could use the sewing machine to embroider “COLLEGE” on an old sweatshirt. Project for Winter Break next week.</p>

10

<p>Yeah, lots of possibilities for humor, parody, pranks, and I must admit I love to wear my late Dad’s “Western Reserve” sweatshirt.</p>

11

<p>Actually I get to have lots of interesting conversations with people when I’m wearing my USC stuff, including a very pleasant one last weekend with a UCLA grad.</p>

12

<p>I think nothing is wrong with a car decal from either an Ivy or from “East Jabyp State College”. In fact, many more of the latter variety are seen around where I live. People are proud and happy for their kids, wherever they are going to school, at least around here. I only allow the cling-on decals that can be peeled off, not the kind which are premanent that need scraping.
A funny anecdote - we have an old car that my 20 year old son used when he was a high school senior, and I put a decal from his college on it. Now my daughter is a h.s senior and drives the car. She made a big deal of taking his college decal off the car and putting it on the mirror over the bureau in his room, because it was now HER car and she didn’t see the need to advertise her brother. But when she was accepted ED to college, they sent a car decal along with the acceptance letter. A little while after she put her decal on the car window, she said “I think I’ll put my brother’s decal back on now, too.” :slight_smile: Kids are funny.</p>

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<p>You have to admit, decals beat the alternative bumper/window paraphernalia:</p>

<p>1 bobble head dog/fireman/hula dancer
2 Gaudy air freshener
3 child peeing on: sadam/ford/chevy/
4 “honk if you’re horny”
5 “_______ the other white meat”
6 “God is my co-pilot”
7 “Single and lovin’ it”
8 "Bush/Cheny
9 “Kerry/Edwards”
10 “What would Jesus Do?”
11 Provocatively posed nude woman
12 Favorite winning sports team
13 Favorite (and more common) losing sports team
14 I <heart> something
15 “Meat is Murder”
16 Ohio State “Go Buckeyes” (particularly offensive!)</heart></p>

14

<p>Spotted yesterday in the vicinity of George Wash. U: two students walked by, one in a Michigan sweat, and the next in a Wisconsin sweat. Transfers or just being cool?</p>

15

<p>dudedad,</p>

<p>either would apply!</p>

<p>as such:</p>

<p>Michigan because Michigan. </p>

<p>Wisconsin: because he was able to hang with the Michigan guy!;)</p>

16

<p>

Digi-what are you waiting for? Proceeds could put at least one child through at least one year of school.</p>

17

<p>After moving to our new state last year, NC, and after living on the west coast, I have never seen so many bumper stickers, actual state license plates and cars painted in the school colors than here. Yes there are a ton of Carolina blue for UNC Chapel Hill, but no where near the amount of NC State ones. I have seen cars black and red (school colors-custom job) with matching plates and the matching holders with numerous stickers. Driver gets out, with NC State clothes, key chain, purse, hat…you name it. Almost every house in our neighborhood has those outside flags.</p>

<p>I have a cute rooster, or snowman, whatever season or holiday…everyone else, NC State, Carolina,Duke, Wake Forest, or ECU. One neighbor put out a Ohio State flag and the grief the neighbor got was hysterical! On DD’s campus (NCSU) it looks like the bookstore clothing is the only apparel of choice. I just haven’t seen anything like it. There are actually more bumper stickers with the NC state logo than the numbers for cars for NASCAR.</p>

<p>There are parkas, and sweats, and jackets, umbrellas, sheets, shorts, glasses, chairs…the list is endless and it is everywhere here. DD#2 was considering USC for arch and her sport and we had mentioned USC when asked…every single person she told thought University of South Carolina, not USC (la)!!! Some people here did not realize such another school existed!! I kept thinking, football, Rose bowl…but nope is all about basketball. Basketball all the time.</p>

<p>DD has my sis’s hand-me-down sweatshirts from when she went to school, USD, UCSB and GW. Has her sis’s school Cal Poly SLO, and no one here including guidance counselor was familiar with any.</p>

<p>It has been a learning experience.</p>

<p>Kat</p>

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<p>Where I live, people have so many stickers on the back of their car advertising that their daughter is a cheerleader at such and such high, or their son is a football player, or an honor student at XX Middle School, etc. that they must have trouble seeing out the back window. My son has put every sticker from every college we visited on his car as a joke (along with the “My Son Got a Hole In One at Putt Putt World” and other irreverent stickers) I knew that when he actually said he wanted a sweat shirt from a school, that he had found his first choice. It is totally unlike him to wear anything with a logo. He takes pride in the bargains that he finds at places like the Salvation Army Store.</p>

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<p>In NoVA, it’s cars covered with Virginia Tech decals and people flying VT flags from their houses. To a lesser extend there are decals for UVA. BTW, USC (also referred to as SC) in Virginia means the University of Southern California. Although honestly some people aren’t familiar with it or confuse it with a UC. South Carolina has virtually no visibility.</p>

20

<p>I have a relatively new car ( last July) so I no longer have several bumper stickers that I had collected over the years
what I have
a rainbow APPLE on windshield behind rearview mirror( If anyone knows where I can get a dogcow?)
Rear license plate holder Garfield Bulldogs
window stickers
Kerry/Edwards- parking sticker for health club- Pearl Jam scarecrow & an oval sticker of a paw print ( for our lab- I wanted one that said Woof!)
Perhaps we should get one that says CC member? ( * addict* )</p>