The University of Tennessee has found a way to make lemonade from bullies' lemons.
After a Florida elementary student was bullied for wearing a crude, homemade UT shirt on "College Colors" day, the university fought back by using his hand-drawn design -- the letters "U" and "T," which the youth scrawled across a piece of paper that he pinned to an orange shirt -- for a new mass-produced souvenir shirt. As of Tuesday afternoon, pre-orders had reached 16,000, university officials say. Demand has been so great that customers crashed the school's website over the weekend, says media relations director Tyra E. Haag.
The shirt is selling for $14.99. Of that money, $7.50 will cover the cost of the shirt, and the rest will be donated to the charity Stop the Bullying, Haag says.