Why we may want to tone our demand for university artefacts down a little.
Look, I get it. University is a special time in any young person’s life, and I totally understand the impulse to flaunt and commemorate one’s university experience through the acquisition of some sort of physical artefact. The conceptual existence of the UofT merch store and the demand that necessitates it does not bother me. However, the degree to which students seem to want merch and the resulting business practices of the merch store are a little bit more objectionable. Let me tell you why.
Tucked deceptively behind the academic facade of the UofT Bookstore, the merch store seems on its surface to be fairly normal. The website first confronts you with the apparel section, which offers a wide variety of fairly tasteful UofT branded clothing and accessories (save for their inexplicable and extremely fugly Lululemon collaboration line). Problems only begin to arise when you glance at the prices, and then (I assume) immediately look around the room for your copy of Capital. Fifty dollars for a plain hoodie! Eighty dollars for a full-zip! One hundred and forty-eight dollars for the aforementioned fugly Lululemon pants! The choice is yours: either buy groceries for a month or be a proud owner of a UofT Crest Jacket. This stuff better have been sewn by only the most skilled and nimblest-fingered of child sweatshop labourers.
Overpriced clothing on its own would be forgivable: anyone who’s ever shopped in an airport or at a sports stadium has seen far worse, and perhaps this is how they have to fund operations after Vic was forced to sell their oil rig. The real horror comes when you navigate to the “Gifts and Lifestyle” tab. Consider, for example, the idea of spending eighty-five dollars on a pony plushie which has no visible connection to the university save the deadened look in its glass eyes. Or, perhaps, navigate to the “Jewellery and Watches” tab and buy yourself a gold ring for the competitive price of five thousand three hundred and fifty-five dollars. It takes a great deal of effort and audacity to overprice pure gold, but the brave pioneers at the UofT merch store have done it. This pricing also arouses suspicion about the more reasonable items around it – you can buy a UofT pendant necklace for a very acceptable thirty dollars, but you’ve gotta wonder about the corners they’re cutting to reach that low of a price point (I imagine it’s been forged from leftover soda cans they found on the street, or perhaps taken off the corpse of an alumnus).
Let us diplomatically ignore the store’s attempts to snare graduates on their way out (the three hundred dollar diploma frames may be worth more than certain diplomas) and move on to our conclusion. I’m not normally one to espouse any belief in the invisible hand of the free market, but judging by the amount of merch I see being worn around campus, it’s pretty clear that they can justify these prices based upon the amount of students buying them. So, students, here’s my very measured rallying cry: don’t stop buying merchandise forever, merely for long enough to make them respond to a lack of demand and lower the prices. That, or you could just keep buying stuff so I can walk around campus feeling shrewd and superior for not having bought anything. Either works.
