On Saturday, Mar. 2, Rowan After Hours (RAH) hosted a brand new event, ‘RAH Seussical,’ which not so coincidentally fell on “Read Across America” day. 

In this spirit, RAH held a book exchange, where donated books were available for students to take. However, the main focus of the night was to celebrate the impact and legacy of Dr. Seuss.

Activities were abundant throughout the Student Center, including DIY magnetic poetry, a photo booth, a ball pit and cotton candy (like the Truffulas in the Lorax!). RAH’s signature midnight food bar was present yet again, featuring Dr. Seuss’s most famous food, green eggs and ham.

The night’s co-sponsor, the Elementary Education Club, offered remarks about Dr. Seuss.

“His creativity with making up his own words and characters is just a way for anyone, children or adults, to have a love for reading, in his own world, and it makes reading that much more fun,” said the club’s secretary, Molly Leenas.

The Elementary Education Club helps with the professional development of early elementary education majors. Educators across the nation have started the Read Across America challenge in elementary schools where children are challenged to read as many books as they can within a limited amount of time. Many students have to track the books that they read, typically on a chart in the school or classrooms tallying the total.

“Our ultimate goal is to have all our education students come together to learn off each other with our future classes,” Leenas said.

The club posits that reading is heavily linked to a child’s early development, and they wanted to share this important concept with the rest of Rowan to get the name of their club out there. Further, there was a desire to encourage Rowan students to read more while also celebrating the brilliant mind of Dr. Seuss.

“We’re hoping that some education majors who may not have known about our club would come here and see the goal of those prizes is that they can take it into their classroom and teach it themselves,” Leenas said.

Even in planning this event for the first time this year, there was a goal of reminding students about the importance of reading.

“I feel like in college, not a lot of people have time to read for fun, so we are trying to encourage people to pick up a book once in awhile, not because you have to,” said RAH’s student program coordinator, Joseph Scafiro.

Happy birthday, Dr. Seuss!

For comments/questions about this story, email features@thewhitonline.com or tweet @TheWhitOnline.