By Susan Brinkmann, OCDS
Staff Journalist
After receiving complaints from parents and schools, a distributor of school supplies is being forced to travel throughout the state of Missouri to pull pencils and notebooks that carry Barack Obama’s 2008 campaign logo.
Fox News is reporting that Pencil Wholesale inadvertently filled school supply vending machines with items that sport Obama logos and the slogan “Change We Can Believe In.” The items were produced by Harcourt Pencil Co., based in Milroy, Indiana, and are believed to have been distributed throughout the state.
The items were only discovered after two families complained about materials carrying a political message. Since then, schools have begun calling on Pencil Wholesale to remove the items.
“Don’t be mad at us,” said Greg Jones, a sales representative with Pencil Wholesale who delivers supplies to more than 800 schools. “It was a total accident.”
The supplies were designed by the art department of Harcourt Pencil Co., based in Milroy, Ind., Jones said.
“The art department was trying to be cutesy,” he said, and is currently trying to find all of the offensive supplies. Out of a case of 72 notebooks sporting a “Change We Can Believe In” logo, he’s only been able to locate three.
“It’s turned out to be really ugly,” Jones said. “We’re trying to get them out of the schools as fast as we can.”
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