CTY T-shirts
You can document the history of CTY in t-shirts.
In the beginning, CTY t-shirts were designed by the students and printed during the session. T-shirts in 1982 and in 1984 through 1988 were student-designed and were specific to each site. When the college system was instituted, T-shirts became specific to each college. The shirts often captured the spirit of the session. However, they occasionally ran into problems getting some shirts approved... the infamous "Flying Gifted Fists Of Death" shirt which was vetoed by JHU (I think) as being too obnoxious but got printed up privately. It depicted a pair of fists flying with "SAT-V" printed on one and "SAT-M" printed on the other.
However, 1988 was the last year the official CTY shirts were student designed. After that, the shirts were designed by CTY prior to the beginning of the session. From 1989 to mid 90s, the shirts were all of a similar blocky design, each year printed in a different color. The 1995 shirt commemorated the 15th year of CTY, and was quite ugly. Students took to "redesigning" the shirts in one way or another, by tye-dying them, cutting them up to make tank tops or halters, or having their friends sign them. In 1996, 1997 and 1998, as the IAAY name change took place, the shirts began to feature the IAAY letters much more prominently than the CTY ones, much to the annoyance of CTY students, who defaced the shirts by crossing out IAAY and writing in CTY with pens. However, in 1999, the shirts switch back to featuring the CTY letters as the name of the program changed back to CTY, and the designs became downright nice, instead of the either boringness or just plain ugliness of previous shirts (which often featured the color yellow).
As the official shirts became less personal, students started designing and printing their own shirts. Often, classes, halls, or social circles would design shirts filled with inside jokes and have them printed privately. Even RAs got into the act, producing official RA shirts for some sessions. For a number of years at Carlilse, "nomore" shirts were produced, with a list of the names of all of that years nomores and a snazzy graphic. A four year CTYer could end up with nearly a dozen CTY related shirts, documenting different parts of their CTY history.
Even after the shirts stopped being student designed, many sites produced CTY Frisbees that remained student designed. I am not sure of the history of this, but I know it occur at least between 1994 and 1997.
Some CTY T-shirt Designs
Thanks to Alison Bazeley and Caroline for the t-shirt images
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