To Plan the 2010-2011 School Year?

Here are minutes from our first general body meeting of the semester.
1. Introductions!
2. Google Calendar: Check for Event Dates
http://www.google.com/calendar/embed?src=usgeke5njj38gc997hehfr47ag%40group.calendar.google.com&ctz=America/New_York
3. Inductions: October 2, 11 am in the Library Auditorium. (Coffee with the Dean 10 am.)
4. Membership: Only Full, National Members may apply for scholarships, awards, or to attend the national conference. Social members are encouraged to attend all chapter (TCNJ) events.
5. Dues must be turned in by September 15th in order to be inducted this year.
6. Terhune Fundraiser: Contact Todd (petty4@tcnj.edu) if you would like to sign up! Shifts are 9-6 on any available day (see Todd for dates) and Terhune will donate $90 dollars to the organization per volunteer. (Also, there are delicious donuts and a great employee discount for any day you work!)
7. Book Club: Our first book will discuss Black Ice, the STD Common Reader for this year, and we will meet next Wednesday (9/15) at 4:30 in Bliss 228.
8. Convention (Pittsburgh): March 23-26 2011
a. For those who would like to submit: send Professor Steinberg (dsteinbe@tcnj.edu) what you plan to submit by October 22.
b. All Scholarship and Award applications go through Professor Steinberg.
c. Members may apply for anything for which they fit the award description.
d. If you would like to be added to the Pittsburgh Module inside SOCS and did not sign up at the meeting, please email Professor Steinberg.
9. Blog/Website: If you have something you would like to write, email an E-Board member and it will be posted to the Blog! Also, remember to comment on posts!
10. Also, additional fundraising information not mentioned at the meeting: The Student Finance Board is sponsoring live music and an outdoor grill every Friday before Fall Break and is offering $150 dollars in fundraising money to any organization that volunteers to grill for one of the events. If anyone is interested in looking further into organizing our participation, please let us know!
Other Important Links, also listed in the SOCS homepage:
Our award-winning chapter webpage is http://enghonor.intrasun.tcnj.edu
Our award-winning chapter blog is http://enghonor.blogspot.com/
Our national organization's website is at
http://www.english.org/sigmatd/index.shtml. Please bookmark this site and check it for information about internships, conference opportunities, scholarships, and publishing opportunities.

Take care,
Rebecca

To Stop Burning Books?

Today's discouraging news is that Pastor Terry Jones of the Dove World Outreach Center is planning to go ahead with plans to burn copies of the Koran to commemorate the September 11 attacks on the US. American officials, including Secretary of State Hilary Clinton, Attorney General Eric Holder, and US military commander David Petraeus have all condemned the planned book burning and have pleaded with Pastor Jones, noting that his actions will make our troops -- indeed all Americans -- less safe.

Pastor Jones is within his constitutional rights to burn books that he himself owns -- book burning is protected as an act of free speech. It is, however, at the very least, an unkind gesture to burn anyone's Holy Book. Pastor Jones claims that his actions are directed only to radical Islam, but, of course, the Koran is a sacred text to all Muslims, not merely to the radical fringe. If Pastor Jones wishes to send a message only to radical Islamists, perhaps he should search for written texts advocating radical Islam, and burn those, leaving the Koran, with its messges of charity and peace, intact. Pastor Jones claims to have prayed over his decision; I respectfully urge him to pray again.

Much American anger has been directed against Muslims planning to build an Islamic cultural center in a renovated building in lower Manhattan. This Islamic cultural center will contain a prayer room, and will be within a few blocks of the site of the World Trade Center destroyed on September 11, 2001, but it will not be visible from "ground zero." The same Bill of Rights that allows Terry Jones to burn books also allows Muslims to follow Islam and to build prayer rooms, cultural centers, and even mosques on land which they themselves own. Many Americans are asking Muslims to respond with sensitivity to the feelings of those who lost loved ones on September 11, 2001, and to cancel plans to build an Islamic cultural center within a few blocks of "ground zero." Are those same Americans calling on Pastor Jones to be sensitive to the feelings of Muslims worldwide whose Holy Book is being burned?

Calls on Muslims not to build anything close to ground zero fill me with suspicion. Where exactly ought Muslims to build their mosques and cultural centers? Five blocks from "ground zero"? in midtown Manhattan? in New Jersey? no where in the Western hemisphere? Could stopping a cultural center be a wedge that eventually allows anyone anywhere in the US to have her or his feelings hurt by someone who wishes to build a non-Christian worship space, and so to halt construction of that mosque, synagogue, or temple?

It's important that those of us who read books take a stance in favor if keeping them unburned by those who prefer to use them as symbols of hatred.