In anticipation of Tuesday’s Silver Taps ceremony, Traditions Council sold out of the 200 T-shirts it ordered to help fund travel expenses for the parents of students honored at Silver Taps on Nov. 20, after only a day and a half of sales.
The families are invited to campus prior to Silver Taps to see where their children went to school and meet people who knew them, said Madeline Schulz, management junior and Traditions Council Vice Chair of administration and finance.
Funding difficulties can arise when parents have to worry about travel expenses, said Meredith Ace, communication senior and chair of the Lawrence Sullivan Ross subcommittee, which
hosts the families prior to the ceremony.
“They have a bunch of things going on in their mind and the last thing they want to worry about is booking a hotel or having to pay for gas, and sometimes it is flights,” Ace said. “Some parents can’t come down if they are from out of state or whatever it may be. It can be difficult for them.”
In order to raise the money, Traditions Council designed long-sleeved shirts, Ace said. The design on the front was a compass without the east and the phrase “Ne’er to the East.” They sold out within a day and a half.
“We were very conservative with the first round of shirts because we weren’t sure how much we were going to sell or how much interest there would be,” Schulz said.
Ace said the subcommittee printed 200 shirts, and since they were able to sell them so quickly, they were able to give about $800 to a support fund for the families.
“We created a fund through Student Assistant Services that provides them with gas money, money for hotels, or whatever it may be,” Ace said. “We just started it this year and so we are not able to cover all expenses, but it will at least help them out in some way.”
Ace said Traditions Council hopes to be able to cover all of a family’s expenses in the future.
“I think this is such a good way to take some stress off of them and to help them in one of the worst times in their life,” Ace said. “This can bring some sort of comfort to them, and we wanted to take the time and make the effort to raise this money so they wouldn’t have to be worried about that.”
Another initiative that Traditions Council will start with the ceremony following Tuesday’s Silver Taps are letters to the families that can be submitted online, Ace said.
“It will look like a Google form,” Ace said. “It’s for people in case they didn’t get the chance to go by a table and would still like write a letter. We are going to send out a link that will send all the letters to us, and we will print them out and have them for the families.”
Ace said students should attend the ceremony Tuesday.
“The families are just unbelievably appreciative of all the students that come out,” Ace said. “Just standing out there and your presence makes more of a difference to the families than any of us will ever realize.”
Traditions Council plans to start selling Silver Taps shirts again in February.