Members of KSC’s English honors society Sigma Tau Delta helped set Keene State Students up on dates … with a book!
Members of the society had a table in the student center Friday, Feb. 16, stocked with books and candies. Each book was wrapped in brown paper with the genre and a vague description written on the paper so students would not know what the book was. Some envelopes contained information about a specific ebook to check out from the library and some candy as an extra sweet treat.
“We had some books that were very generously donated to us by Toadstool. They’re called advance reader copies, which means a lot of them aren’t out yet,” said Kyla Culver, the social media manager for Sigma Tau Delta.
Culver added, “We looked really hard to find a little bit of everything … and we kind of supplemented a little bit with our own shopping, so we have a little bit of everything for everyone.”
The event lasted from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. Students could come into the student center throughout the day and pick up a book they might find interesting. There were several different genres of books available, such as young adult, fantasy, historical fiction and romance.
“It’s fun to just wander through the events and stuff,” said sophomore Leah, who had chosen a historical fiction book.
According to the Sigma Tau Delta Instagram page, the goal was for students to commit to 100 minutes of reading.
“No running out on your date early!” said their Instagram post about the event.
They also accepted book donations from students which would be used in future events they hosted.
“This event is our first event for the spring semester. It’s the first major event that we’ve really thrown on campus,” said Mallory Warner, the vice president of Keene’s chapter of Sigma Tau Delta. “We’re kind of trying to reinvigorate the chapter, a lot of our members are graduating … and also really help people’s love of books.”
Warner added, “It’s actually the lovely Kyla who had this idea … and we all had different jobs to really make this go smoothly,” Warner added. “We’re big readers in this society.”
Their Instagram story stated they gave away all of the books and ebook envelopes during the event, totaling over 50 books. They also posted that it is possible they might do an event like this again in the future because of many requests for it.
Orion Corbin can be contacted at
ocorbin@kscequinox.com
