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Vintage Vantage, an online T-shirt company, is giving away free shirts with its controversial "Voting is for old people" message if recipients promise to wear the shirts while voting and send in a picture as proof.
The move is to counteract the negative attention the company received in February, when Urban Outfitters began marketing the product. The company plans to run pictures of people voting while wearing the shirts on its Web site, vintagevantage.com.
While MTV gives young voters the option to "Choose or Lose" in the upcoming presidential election and Sean "P. Diddy" Combs issues the ultimatum to "Vote or Die," Vintage Vantage has been delivering a different message.
"We want to prove the shirt isn't malicious," said John Eddie, owner of Vintage Vantage and one of the shirt's designers. "It's an opportunity to make a difference at the polls."
Keddie said the shirt had been sold on his company's Web site for six months without controversy before appearing on the shelves of Urban Outfitters.
"When Urban Outfitters started selling the shirts, they reached a mainstream audience, and they started to get attention," Keddie said.
The Harvard Institute of Politics and Russell Simmons, owner of Phat Farm and creator of Hip-Hop Summit, a movement that works to increase voter education and registration, attacked Urban Outfitters for selling the shirt, which they thought gave young people the wrong ideas about political involvement.
"The press thought it was discouraging youth from voting," Keddie said. "We thought the press did not give young people enough credit to understand the shirt's irony."
Keddie said Urban Outfitters pulled the shirt from its stores by early March because of the criticism.
Keddie said the shirt's slogan was viewed as a political statement although the design team did not mean for it to be seen that way when creating the shirt.
"Our intention was for it just to be a funny shirt like all our shirts - irreverent and sarcastic," Keddie said. "It was not supposed to be political. We try and stay away from political messages."
Although the shirt was not originally intended to be political, Keddie said he now hopes the incentive of a free shirt will increase political activity among young voters.
"Lots of people who order the shirt would probably have been going to the polls anyway, but some who weren't might feel obligated to take the picture and go to the polls," Keddie said.
Keddie said he has not set a goal for how many people he wants to wear the shirts on election day, but 400 to 500 shirts have already been ordered since Vintage Vantage started giving them away two weeks ago.
Student Government President Zachery Scott, who has been working with various student organizations to plan campus voter registration drives, recently ordered one of the shirts because he said he believes they will have a positive effect on student turnout.
"I think it is a neat satirical way of getting people to vote, and the shirt is pretty hip too," Scott said.
Scott said the shirt's slogan does not reflect USC students' thoughts toward voting, but he thinks students will understand its ironic humor.
"I think students take voting seriously," Scott said. "But our goal is to just get as many students to vote as possible so if you get the joke, by all means get the shirt."
Teresa Mark, a second-year biology student, considers the company's decision to give the shirt away for free to be a crafty business ploy.
"While I think this is a good way to get young people to register to vote, I think it also serves as a clever way to attract business to their Web site," Mark said.
Honors College dean and political science professor Peter Sederberg said students should not base their decisions upon an article of clothing.
"Anyone who would guide their actions in life according to an Urban Outfitters shirt probably shouldn't vote," Sederberg said.
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