Ames and ISU Police are getting into the Veishea spirit with five new T-shirt designs that will tell partygoers how to stay safe and have a good time.

The T-shirts, which feature the return of the mascot Frank the Flamingo, will encourage revelers to use CyRide instead of drinking and driving, avoid littering, keep parties under control, use restrooms instead of urinating in public and avoid underage drinking. Buttons with these designs are also planned.

The campaign cost is an estimated $12,000, with some funding going toward ads, said Harry Samms, Ames Police community resource officer. Of that, $6,000 came from the Ames City Council and $6,000 came from the ISU Police.

These designs are important, he said, because relations between students, citizens and police departments “should not be scary.”

“People should know who their police officers are and not be afraid of them,” he said. “The T-shirts are a prop, a lure, to get people to talk to officers. The goal is for people to be comfortable with their officers. You talk with them, have a laugh. It’s about positive encounters.”

The Ames Police party response team, the late-night patrol dedicated to handling part disturbance complaints, has already started to hand out the first run of T-shirts.

Samms said the shirts are centered around giving advice to foster a good working relationship between partiers and the police because “we’re not always out to bust your party.”

Samms said he is hoping the effect of these lessons will be felt at Veishea and “as the weather gets nicer.”

“We want you to party without litter and to have a good time without bothering anybody else,” he said. “The idea for Veishea is to have a good time, but we want people to know it’s not going to be keg stands by the Campanile.”

ISU Police plan on dispersing the T-shirts throughout the next few weeks, said Patrol Officer Emily Stauffer. She said the goal is to disperse the shirts to various groups of students before Veishea, but the goal isn’t just “handing out free stuff – it’s the message.”

“It’s important to have good relationships with the students, because they don’t just want them to see us showing up at parties,” she said. “We have new students coming in every semester and leaving [every semester], so some of them don’t know about what we do. We’re not just there to be the bad guys.”

Riots during Veishea have hurt the relationship between students and police officers in the past, Samms said, which makes community outreach an important undertaking. Ames Police created the community resource officer position eight years ago to focus on this problem.

After the 1988 Veishea riots, police officers started to walk the bars to start creating relationships with bar owners. This tactic has been mostly successful, and the party response team has been a direct outgrowth and continuation of that relationship, he said.

“There’s a need for a positive bridge,” Samms said. “We don’t want every encounter with a police officer to be a negative one, and we’re trying to advance that with the T-shirts.”

Stauffer said she does not foresee any problems with this year’s Veishea, but the precautions the police are taking are going to include police on bikes to help with the large crowds and to further advance face-to-face relations with students and citizens alike.

“We’re just excited to get out and make it a successful Veishea,” she said.