Big Ten forces IUSA to change campaign name

The powder-blue Big Ten T-shirts of then-junior Justin Kingsolver’s ticket are a part of campaign history.

So is the name.

The current IU Student Association administration, which campaigned as the Big Ten ticket, will now be referred to as the Big Six administration.

After launching the campaign in early February, Kingsolver used the name Big Ten to represent his idea of how IUSA would run with him as head.

“When we said Big Ten ticket, we wanted to be the leader of the Big Ten in student government,” he said.

The Big Ten Conference didn’t quite see it that way.

Just days before the election, Kingsolver received a cease-and-desist letter from the Conference’s intellectual property protection team, which claimed an unauthorized use of the Big Ten name.

The Conference did not want to give the impression to IU students that it endorsed the Big Ten administration for IUSA.

“Very few people know, and I didn’t know, that they actually own the words ‘Big Ten,’” Kingsolver said.

Since the campaign was contacted only days before the March 1-2 elections, candidates were allowed to use the title until the race concluded, Kingsolver said.

Not only did the ticket’s name evoke the athletic organization, but the ticket’s logo also did.

“I admit, the original logo was pretty similar,” Kingsolver said. “It was a lesson for us in what intellectual property means.”

Choosing a new name was not an issue for the administration. Rather, it was a welcome change.

“We wanted to put the campaign behind us,” Kingsolver said. “Our campaign didn’t define us. It was now about our six platforms.”

­­— Matthew Glowicki