By Elizabeth Daub and Braden Felts

Shoes. To some, they may mean everything. To others, they hardly realize they are there. Someone’s shoes can say much about them, from their socioeconomic status, to their biases, and more. 

Photo credit: Braden Felts

Within the last decade, sneakerhead culture has taken over the shoe industry. Some shoe fanatics have started buying shoes worth tens of thousands of dollars and are either reselling or collecting fabulous footwear. For an industry worth up to almost $400 billion a year, how can shoes mean so much and yet so little at the same time?

William Hershey (’24) had much to say about his “shoe game.” It all started one day in mid-February when Hershey woke up late for school. Stressed about making it to school on time, Hershey grabbed some socks and threw on the one pair of shoes he could find: Nike slides. Hershey’s sock-and-slide combination has been his go-to footwear ever since. 

Hershey loves the comfort and ease of the slides and the warmth of the socks. He believes “some people who are wearing uncomfortable shoes may envy me and give me weird looks,” but other than that, Hershey has received little “grief” about his shoe game.

Photo credit: Elizabeth Daub

While Hershey’s shoe choice may seem simple on the outside, this couldn’t be further from the truth. Recently, shoes such as Blundstones, OnClouds, and Golden Gooses have a stranglehold on Collegiate students JK through 12. Hershey thinks these are “overrated trends” that lead to mass conformity within the student body. 

As a second-semester Senior, Hershey wants to find what works for him rather than conform to what his peers tell him he should wear. He “doesn’t subscribe to the belief” that he needs to wear a particular pair of shoes to fit in. 

Along the lines of conformity, Hershey said that, in his eyes, he is “more of a G.O.A.T. than a sheep.” Hershey’s untraditional footwear represents more than apathy; he hopes it will awaken a non-conforming spirit in all Collegiate students so that one day, Pitt Hall is filled with more than just the same three types of shoes.