Kicking off the academic year with the annual College Poster Sale
With car trunks packed to the brim, University of Georgia students returned to campus the second week of August for the start of the new academic year. For nearly 40 years, the College Poster Sale has helped welcome them back.
For a full week, some 1,400 posters of all sizes line the walls and pile up on tables in the Tate Student Center Breezeway while students bounce in and out looking for new decorations.
“Working in an environment like this, it’s easy to stay energized,” says Whitney Cain, assistant director for facilities and operations in the Tate Center. “The poster sale is always a moment to see what is catching students’ attention and what they relate to. That’s refreshing because it changes from year to year.”
The sale is what Cain calls “a barometer on pop culture,” as students flip through hundreds of posters ranging from music, art, movies, and everything in between. What they end up with is a personalized, one-stop-shop experience.
Large, wall-sized posters once dominated student tastes, but over the last couple of years, Cain has noticed a shift. Smaller 11×17 and 8×11 posters have become increasingly popular.
“Students create a collection of typically four to six posters. You could almost see students, in real time, create a gallery wall,” Cain says.
Each day, the sale runs from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m., but for Jeff Apostolou, it’s an early rise for setup at 6 a.m. and shutdown at midnight. A company road manager covering the southern territory, he has been coming to UGA for 35 years.
“Athens is a classic college town, not every school is like that,” Apostolou says. “Working here is a real pleasure for us.”
In part because of the company’s strong relationship with UGA over the years, Athens is the poster sale’s first stop on its national tour. That ensures UGA students get the best selection, and for Apostolou there is satisfaction in helping 800 to 1,000 of them celebrate the start of a new year.
Those students include Sofia Alfieri, a second year intended economics major, and Dhristi Patel, a second year majoring in pharmaceutical studies, who visited the poster sale in search of room decor.
While Alfieri found a large floral poster to put up in her living room after her first trip, she revisited the poster sale with Patel, who had something else in mind.
“My room is pretty bland, and I needed to spice it up a little,” Patel said, holding a poster of Canadian singer-songwriter The Weeknd. “I’m going to his concert. This is perfect.”