#92 – Wearing Rival College T-Shirts on Bethel’s Campus

We all know that Bethel students are quite skilled at accumulating dozens of Bethel shirts over their college career. But sometimes students are pretty good at collecting t-shirts from other colleges too.

Now, it’s one thing if you’re wearing a standard public university shirt on campus. Donning a Notre Dame, Purdue, or Indiana University shirt and wearing it around campus is somewhat understandable. These are colleges that are renowned across the nation, mostly for their sports teams, and you can easily grab these shirts at any local Wal-Mart in Indiana for around ten bucks.

But if you’re wearing the t-shirt of one of Bethel’s rival colleges such as Indiana Wesleyan, Taylor, or Grace, you ought to be ashamed of yourself. How dare you desecrate the name of Bethel, the house of God, by endorsing those filthy colleges on campus. I would venture to say that even Jesus would find that despicable. I don’t have any Scripture to back up that claim. I don’t have a verse that says, “Thou shall not wear thy opponent’s garments at Bethel; that is an abomination.” But I bet that if Jesus caught a Pharisee wearing a t-shirt that said “Babylon University” on it, he would have probably flipped over some temple tables.

Here are some of the excuses Bethel students might use to justify wearing such repulsive swag on campus:

“I got this shirt for free.”

And that’s understandable. Free stuff is pretty cool, and colleges hand out free t-shirts like candy. But by saying this, you’re admitting that you would wear the shirt strictly for its functional purpose, regardless of what you’re endorsing. If I gave you a free shirt that said, “I like to kick old ladies in the face”, would you wear that shirt too? Huh? Didn’t think so. Be careful what you endorse.

“I got this shirt in tenth grade when I was still checking out other colleges.”

Yeah, when I was tenth grade, I wore skinny jeans and thought the Backstreet Boys were still cool. But I grew up and got over myself.

 “I went to this college, then transferred to Bethel”

So you went to a rival school for a year or two and then relocated to Bethel. I’m glad you finally saw the light. But that doesn’t grant you consent to continue to wear their t-shirts on our campus. You’ve moved on. Stop living in the past. If you enter into a new relationship with a really awesome girl, you might want to consider getting that tattoo of your old girlfriend’s name removed.

Obviously, something has to be done about this on campus. So here’s what’s going to happen. Bethel College is going to issue a “no rival college t-shirt” rule on campus and hire a special squad of Bethel students to enforce it. You won’t know who the students are, because they’ll be living among you. They could be your RA, your teammate, your classmate, even your roommate. If they catch you wearing a rival college t-shirt on campus, they will teach you not to defame the name of the house of God.

For the men, they will tear the shirt off of your back and force you to walk back to your dorm, shirtless and in humiliation. It will send a message to everyone who sees you to never wear one of those detestable shirts on campus.

As for the girls, it would be very unbethical for the t-shirt squad to do that to you. Instead, they’ll cover your torso with a big black ugly garbage bag to conceal your “immodest” shirt choice. And they’ll spray paint the word “Bethel” on it. And you’ll have to wear it the rest of the day.

Alright, maybe that’s a little extreme. But there’s never a good reason to wear a Bethel rival’s t-shirt. This is the kind of move that deflates Bethel morale, shows poor Pilot spirit, and just looks plain bad. Sure, it’s a free country, and you have every right to wear that shirt. But that also means we have the right to tell you to take it off.

Go Pilots!