One Size Does Not Fit All
Jon Allred, Sports Editor

In life, people take little things for granted, such as being able to walk into a shoe-store to buy shoes or going to a clothing store to buy their choice of clothes in their size.  With my size 18 shoe, I haven’t been able to buy a pair of shoes in a shoe-store since I was in sixth-grade.  In addition, I stand 6’8” and have very limited options in clothing attire when I walk into stores such as Wal-Mart or JCPenny.

Perhaps this is why I feel frustrated whenever I enter one of those stores or the campus bookstore and none of those places ever have the clothing styles I like in my size.  In my four years here at CSUMB, I have bought one article of clothing from the bookstore and that was a 2x long sleeve shirt made by Jansport.  Everything else at the bookstore in a 2xl, made by Champion, is cut too tight and do not fit around my shoulders.  I have not tried the UnderArmor attire yet but I don’t think I should only be able to choose from one brand of clothing.

With my height and frame, shirts have to be at least a 2xl or say “tall” on them so I can have length in the shirt.  Most of the time, I end up paying more for my clothes as was the case at “Hot Topic” during Christmas Break where I found a WWE Carlito t-shirt in a 3xl, only to be charged $30 for the shirt as a result of it being a 3xl (a 2xl shirt was only $22 but wouldn’t have fit me after being washed).

When I asked the bookstore about the lack of clothing in a 3xl and 4xl, I was told that the reason I don’t see equal representations of 3xl and 4xl is due to the relative size mix of this university, as evidenced through their sell-through and that their sizing “bell curve” points to an apex in the small and medium range.

Another area of the bookstore that frustrates me is the lack of sporting-good wear such as jerseys.  Maybe it’s just me but I think it would be cool to have some practice jerseys of basketball, baseball and soccer to workout in and wear to the games to show school spirit, something that is truly lacking at Otter home events.

The bookstore’s response to my idea was that the cost of such clothing would far exceed their typical price points as the prices for such items would be tremendous for customers, upwards of $80.00 and is not feasible for our merchandise department to extend the funds to purchase the minimum order quantities necessary to experiment with such high priced clothing (but the bookstore has no problem ordering and charging customers $65.00 for an UnderArmor sweatshirt).

It seems to me that the bookstore doesn’t want to take a chance to see if bigger sized clothing and sporting jerseys would sell.  How will the bookstore ever know if they don’t take a chance?  I bet that if the bookstore did open up to ordering more bigger sizes in all the available clothing selections, that small-to-medium range bell curve would drastically change.