SAN ANTONIO, Texas (KXAN) — A college student from Texas raised thousands of dollars to benefit the families of the Uvalde shooting victims after recreating a T-shirt she saw on a popular Netflix show.
Reagan Allen grew up in San Antonio and now attends Emerson College in Boston. She said her social media feeds became flooded with excitement after people watched the new season of “Stranger Things” when it came out May 27 and saw one of the main characters, Nancy Wheeler, wearing a vintage purple Emerson shirt.
“Everyone was really excited about the shirt, and they were kind of looking for places to buy it,” Allen said. “I’m a graphic designer, so I hopped over to [Adobe] Illustrator, and I recreated the logo in like 20 minutes.”
Three days before the new season’s release, a gunman killed 19 students and two teachers at Uvalde’s Robb Elementary School, a community about 90 miles west of Allen’s hometown. She said the tragedy there came to mind when she thought about how she could sell the shirt. She decided to create an online fundraising campaign through a company called Bonfire, which lets people sell custom shirts and then collect profits later to donate to a cause.
Allen — an Emerson senior majoring in writing, literature and publishing — has now raised almost $31,000 from T-shirt sales through the Bonfire campaign site. The shirts cost $27 apiece. Once the campaign ends, she said all of the proceeds will go to the VictimsFirst fund created after the deadly school shooting to help out the victims’ loved ones. That particular fundraiser has already brought in more than $6.1 million from 81,000 donors, according to the GoFundMe page.
She said she initially ended the campaign after it hit the $25,000 mark, which she called an “uplifting” milestone. However, she decided to open it again after unexpectedly hearing from someone that same night.
“I received a message from a girl that I went to high school with whose family was affected directly by the tragedy,” Allen said. “That really drove home the impact that this campaign has had. I’m just so thankful for the Emerson community for getting behind me on this. It’s it’s just been so humbling, and I’m so grateful.”
It’s unclear how much longer the T-shirt fundraiser will last. Emerson College allowed Allen to license its logo until Aug. 1, she said. Michelle Gaseau, the senior director for strategic communications and media relations, released a statement supporting Allen’s fundraising effort.
“Emerson students have long been known as being creative and civic minded,” Gaseau said. “This project certainly falls into these categories, as the student has reported that proceeds will be going to the Texas Elementary School Shooting Victims Fund. The College is proud when students take initiative and support such causes.”
Allen said she and her two younger sisters wept together after learning about the shooting and felt heartbroken for the victims’ families and their community. She hopes the donations will help them and remind them about how many people are wishing them well.
“These families are going through such an inconsolable thing,” she added. “[I hope] that they can feel the support from all across the country, all across the world, from communities like mine — in a monetary sense and also just a deeper sense. I hope that they can still feel there’s good.”
Allen is also looking forward to returning to Boston this fall and seeing people on campus wearing the purple Emerson College shirt she created. She also said she’s heard that some of the producers behind “Stranger Things” have bought shirts.
“At times like this, you feel so frustrated because you feel like you don’t have paths to take actionable change, but you do,” she said.
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