MIT Students Want to Offend You Into Giving to the Homeless

A screenshot from “Hobo Jacket”

Authors of a website who claim to be students at MIT are attempting to offend us into donating to the homeless with a self-consciously “politically incorrect” project called “Hobo Jacket.”  The site allows people to give money toward the purchase of jackets emblazoned with the logo of their rival schools. Said jackets will then be given to the homeless, to the joy of the cold person and the embarrassment of the target university … or so the site creators hope. The site declares:

HoboJacket is meant to be an edgy way to incentivize more people to donate. Made with love by MIT students procrastinating on their homework, we hope you find our service tastefully offensive, laugh, and help out the unfortunate with Caltech apparel.

(We’ve reached out to the site authors to confirm their identity as MIT students and their earnest intentions, though we have yet to hear back.)

The slightly unclean feeling you’re feeling right now might have to do with the prospect of making a pawn of the homeless by mixing up your concern for them with your useless private school rivalries. You’re sure someone left out in the cold would love something to keep them warm. You’re not so sure they’d like to suffer the dehumanizing indignity of having passerby see them and think, “Why, that hobo went to Yale? And now he’s on the street? Why, Yale must be some kind of a safety school! I’ll wager he majored in something like gender studies! [Chortle, chortle.]” People like the Globe’s Scott Kirsner are, understandably, left a little conflicted.

Not sure how to feel about HoboJacket, project from MIT kids. Funny? Insensitive? Charitable? All 3? hobojacket.tk/index.html

— Scott Kirsner (@ScottKirsner) November 26, 2012

Perhaps that is the reason that the school with the highest number of donated coats isn’t Caltech. It’s MIT, according to the site’s leader board. As an internet statement goes, that’s a mixed one. People seem to be saying, “We’ll buy into this, but we think you’re offensive so we’ll punish your school.” They are still participating in the joke. Alternatively, the donations come from MIT kids who’d like their university to be associated with helping others in need.

There is, of course, another way to acknowledge the good intentions behind “Hobo Jacket” without wrapping a homeless person in the punchline to your elitist joke. You could just ex out the “Hobo jacket” tab and go donate a coat to the homeless that doesn’t have a college logo attached.