To Sell English Major T-Shirts?

Dear Fellow Lovers of English,

Do you chuckle to yourself when you recognize an allusion made to one of Shakespeare's plays? Do you recite quotes from literature in casual conversation with friends? Were you one of those children who hid under the covers in bed, with a flashlight, scrambling to read as much as you could before falling asleep?

If you answered yes to any of those questions....Good news! Sigma Tau Delta is sponsoring a t-shirt sale to help us raise money for our trip to St. Louis. You can support your local chapter of Sigma Tau Delta, as well as receive a cool English-Major-inspired t-shirt that you can wear around campus! The available t-shirts are "TCNJ English" or "English Majors Do It By The Book." Images of what the t-shirts will look like are posted below. Each t-shirt costs $15, and you can place your order at the following link:

https://jedi.tcnj.edu/webteam/cgi-bin/formgenie/formgenie.pl?form=38478

To Serve Pancakes?

Last Saturday, our chapter of Sigma Tau Delta sponsored a Pancake breakfast fundraiser at our local Applebees Restaurant. It was a huge success! Student representatives from Sigma Tau Delta transformed from literary critics, poets and avid book readers to busboys and waitresses for the day. We served faculty, other students and the nearby community delicious pancakes as part of a effort to raise money for the Sigma Tau Delta National Convention in St. Louis, Missouri next month- and raise money we did! As an organization, we sold nearly 100 tickets for the fundraiser and as a result of our fantastic customer service and a job well done by the entire STD 'staff' we were able to raise $650.00 in just a few hours!

We arrived at Applebees at 7:30 in the morning for a preservice training session where we learned the ins and outs of the restaurant business. How to seat guests, how to take an order, how to call out an order to the fantastic chefs in the back and even how to bus the tables was part of our training. After a few practice rounds, our waiters and waitresses were ready for the ensuing crowd, quickly scribbling down orders for pancakes, sausage, coffee, juice , you name it! It was a lot of fun to take on this new role for the day, and place orders for everyone from our own best friends to the many faculty members who came to support.

So much planning and preparation went into this day, so a special thanks to everyone involved- but a special thank you to Danielle Katims and Becky McGowan who were in charge of the event.

Now that we're all such pancake experts, it is probably about time for our honor society to open our very own restaurant chain... perhaps a 'Poetic Pancake House'?
















...or maybe we should just stick to our first love, literature!

To Review Tricks?

I recently finished reading a book by Ellen Hopkins called Tricks. The book is based on true events and follows five teenagers as their lives spiral downward and they eventually become part of the prostitution industry. I am a big fan of books by Hopkins, and the first time I read one of her books, Crank, I was only a sophomore in high school. She writes about mature topics, such as drug use, but does so in verse rather than in prose. The style of the text was what originally drew me to her works. However, I'm not sure if I would feel comfortable stocking texts like these in my classroom when I am a teacher. Has anyone else read any books by Hopkins? How do you feel about the mature content? Is there a certain age at which these books would be deemed acceptable to have in the classroom library?