Amy Matzke is a senior at Virginia Tech.

“Who needs a Benz when you’ve got a BEAMER?”

That’s the question thousands of Virginia Tech students are sporting on their 2005 Orange Effect shirts.

Orange Effect is part of a bigger project, the Hokie Effect, an annual spirit project put on by Tech’s Student Government Association during football season.

For the fourth year, SGA is selling shirts to be worn for Orange Effect football game, where all students are encouraged to wear the shirts and “to fill the stadium in Orange,” says SGA treasurer and Tech senior Lindsey Leisher.

This year’s game will be Tech’s second home game on Sept. 23 against Georgia Tech.

This year, the spirit will extend beyond just the Orange Effect to embrace the Hokie’s other favorite color — maroon. For the first time, SGA is selling a “Maroon Effect” shirt for the Miami game on Nov. 5.

The long-sleeved shirt has a different slogan, a definition of the audible: “a substitute offensive play called by the quarterback at the line of scrimmage as an adjustment to the opposing side’s defensive formation.”

The reason for two shirts this year, according to SGA President and Tech senior Sumeet Bagai, was simply the demand for it.

“[Maroon Effect shirts] had been recommended in the past, because we play a couple of teams each year whose color is also orange — UVA and Miami. Also, a lot of alumni wear maroon to games, and students wear more orange,” Bagai said.

“It’s kind of a compromise between the two.”

During the spring semester, SGA puts out a survey open to any Tech student to suggest a slogan for the next year’s shirts. Last spring, on top of being able to submit a saying, students were also asked if they would buy a Maroon Effect shirt.

The response was overwhelmingly yes, says Bagai, with about 94 percent of those who voted saying they would buy the maroon shirts. Both shirt slogans were picked from the thousands of entries submitted by students.

So far, those voters seem to be right.

At the end of freshman orientation in July, which is when the first 2005 shirts were sold, SGA had sold more than 17,000. SGA would like to sell 25,000 of both the orange and maroon shirts this year, which would be a record number of sales.

Orange Effect shirts are $5 and Maroon Effect shirts are $8, or both as a package deal for $10.

The money made from the shirts goes right back into the SGA program, says Bagai. A lot of it is used for the promotion of the shirts, like signs, banners and the actual cost of shirts themselves. Anything left over goes into the general SGA fund and is used for other events during the year, such as The Big Event, a service project where Tech students volunteer in the neighboring communities, and Relay for Life, a fundraiser for cancer research.

Both shirts can be purchased online at http://www.sga.vt.edu/hokieeffect, in the SGA office in 321 Squires Student Center on the Tech campus from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., Monday through Friday, and in downtown Blacksburg at University Sportswear.