The buzz of anxious murmuring fills the halls as seniors nervously cluster outside the cafeteria. The rumors have been spreading through Ridge ever since the morning, but people still refuse to believe them. This is their moment: the moment that their entire high school career has led up to.

A muted scream shatters the background whispers. Everyone looks for the source of the noise. A girl stands at the head of the line, holding her senior t-shirt in disbelief. The rumors were true. The crowd of awaiting seniors devolves into mayhem. It’s chaos, all chaos.

As Anup Dupaguntla ’17 puts it, “These shirts are awful.”

Senior year is a year of lasts; as a result, it is also a year of firsts. While senior year represents growing up, applying to college, and leaving the familiar bubble of Basking Ridge, it also brings the chance to experience senior traditions, whether it be Senior Tailgate, Senior Spirit Week (at least one day of it, in this case), or senior shirts.

The senior shirts, a longtime staple of the graduating class, is a symbol of pride for the seniors. As a means of distinguishing the senior class from lower classes, most graduating classes have found ways of cleverly incorporating their graduating year into the shirt’s lettering—for an example, see the class of 2016’s shirt, in which the “16” is incorporated into the “IG” of “RIDGE.”

So, it’s safe to say that the class of 2017 had high expectations for the senior shirts.

Unfortunately, the “17” of “2017” was haphazardly incorporated into the shirt’s lettering. That is, not incorporated at all. Seniors were upset to find that the lettering was uneven and that there had been only a half-hearted attempt to conceal “17” within the words on the shirt. Austin Gao ‘17 agrees: “[The] student government should have delegated the work to an art student with some semblance of graphic design concepts.”

Maya Gupta ’17 jokes, “You know the shirt’s bad when you come downstairs and your dad says, ‘That shirt is so cute!’”

But never fear, seniors and anyone with eyes! New apparel is coming soon. Lucas Miller ’17, student body president, states, “Many students, including myself, were upset with how the shirts came out because they were rushed with our very early homecoming week this year. The student government is working on a project to bring new apparel with new designs for our seniors that want it.”

In this case, the student government is hosting a t-shirt design competition, in which seniors can submit designs for new apparel.

Here’s hoping that the new senior apparel will be that which seniors won’t be embarrassed to wear in public.