KNOXVILLE — How honest are we at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville?
Honest Tea, the nation’s top-selling organic bottled tea company, will try to answer that question on Wednesday, Oct. 27, when it brings its Honest Campus experiment to the Knoxville campus.
The company will set up an unmanned, pop-up tea store from 10:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. on the east end of the Johnson-Ward Pedestrian Mall, near Hodges Library.
The Honest Campus store will feature a selection of bottled tea for students, faculty and staff to purchase on the honor system. Each bottle will cost $1. It will be up to each person to decide if they will pay for their drinks. Hidden cameras will record the results; photos and results will be available by the end of the day.
All proceeds from Honest Campus will be donated to UT’s Campus Chest and Adopt-A-Spot, an initiative for student organizations to adopt areas of campus and keep them clean.
Honest Tea, which is 40 percent owned by the Coca-Cola Co., is taking its “honesty experiment” to cities and campuses around the country. Among the schools visited so far: the University of Wisconsin, the University of Southern California, UCLA, Northwestern, the University of Texas, Washington State University, Columbia University, New York University and the University of Vermont.
Universities and colleges have been getting as high as 90 percent honesty ratings, company officials said.
The videos from some of Honest Tea’s experiments can be viewed at http://www.honesttea.com/news/video/.
C O N T A C T :
Samme Menke, Honest Tea, (301-760-4833, samme@honesttea.com )
Amy Blakely, UT Knoxville media relations, (865-974-5034, amy.blakely@tennessee.edu)