I recently received a picture message from a fellow alumnus who was back on campus last weekend. The picture showed a shirt for sale in the Leavey Center bookstore. At first it might seem like just another overpriced Georgetown T-shirt, but a second look reveals something far more appalling.

For the image on the shirt, between the words “Georgetown University,” is a shield — a quasi-coat of arms. An open book with “1789” on it appears on the shield between a crown, a chevron and some stars. It looks vaguely like the Oxford University coat of arms, which also features an open book and crowns. Unfortunately, however, this corporate-looking fictive emblem, probably sketched up in less than five minutes by someone in a cubicle, has nothing to do with Georgetown’s real coat of arms — and indeed little to do with heraldry, the rules and traditions which govern how a coat of arms appear.

Surely the official university store should know about the university’s historical and real insignia and traditions. But, alas, this is not the first time the Georgetown University bookstore has made such egregious errors. In 2009, I had to alert the shop that they were selling Cutter & Buck mock turtlenecks that read “Hoyas Est. 1785.”

These unfortunate occurrences in the university bookstore reveal two trends. The first is that Georgetown is increasingly out-of-touch and confused about its own visual identity and, more generally, its history and tradition. The second is that as the university tightens its grasp on control of university-related products through licensing restrictions, the traditional, attractive, meaningful and high quality is replaced by the corporate, hollow and cheap.

The university has a demonstrable need for a bold, simple visual emblem that is both adaptable to a range of contexts and capable of being displayed in full color. This need is made obvious by the increasingly ubiquitous use of a photograph of a stained-glass window as a quasi-official logo in a variety of contexts where a color emblem is required; the unintelligibly of the black-and-white seal in small or electronic usages; the ongoing use of a phased-out, circular version of the university seal and the employment of athletic logos in non-athletic contexts.

To meet this need, I propose the revival of the university’s official — yet largely forgotten — coat of arms: a beautifully designed, bold and recognizable, highly adaptable, full-color emblem found in various parts of Georgetown’s architecture and in hundreds of documents in the university archives. This would help address the problem brought to the forefront by the use of a fake seal on official T-shirts.

The second issue this pernicious T-shirt raises — that of the negative consequences of the university’s tight control over university products — can be easily seen simply by walking into the Leavey Center bookstore. Not so long ago before the turn of the century, the Georgetown University Shop on 36th Street flourished, counting the Kennedys among their regular clientele. They stocked high-quality Georgetown ties, buttons, jackets and other clothing items alongside their suits and shirts.

But those days are gone, and with the rise of the Collegiate Licensing Company and other corporate machinations to leach profits from the popularity of intercollegiate athletics, the university keeps a tight rein on Georgetown products wherever they are sold. But the result is that the products are bad.

Because the university itself has total control over both the visual emblems it employs and also the branded products it sells, it is ultimately up to the administration to decide whether it wants to invest in its visual identity or continue to employ a hodgepodge of quasi-official insignia. They must decide whether the bookstore engages with the university’s most basic history and tradition or continues to pass off cheap, fake-looking T-shirts on visitors and students.

One can only hope that the administration gives the university its due and creates a visual identity and licensed products worthy of Georgetown.

Jack Carlson graduated from the School of Foreign Service in 2009.