History
of the Department's Purple Shirts for Scholarships
 In 1995, Ruth
Callahan, English faculty member, came up with a novel idea (at least to
us it seemed quite original!) to raise scholarship money by selling
t-shirts. After receiving approval from our department chair, the
idea was announced at Assessment Day (what a venue!) and from the very
beginning, the faculty members voted on color, style and motto. We
can't remember who came up with our earliest motto, "Write On!", but Ruth
thinks it was Char Howey.
The first shirts were a
fairly low-key red with black letters -- nothing too radical! The t-shirts
were printed with a logo and sold to English faculty members for about
twice what they cost, with the profit designated for the English
department scholarship fund. However, the fund-raising didn't stop
with the delivery of the special t-shirts! The last Friday of
every month was announced as THE official t-shirt day--although sometimes
we sneak an additional one in here and there. Each English faculty
member paid a dollar to the scholarship fund for the privilege of wearing
the special t-shirt and playing fashionista for a day. The money has
always gone to the English Department Scholarship Funds.
Eventually, though, folk
tired of the trusty old red rags, and after much discussion, we voted on
white polo necked shirts, with 2 cryptic imprints. On the front, we had a
sort of a badge effect which proclaimed "Rhetoric Ranger" and on the back,
the equally strange "To Compose Is To Live," an idea offered by Pat Haas.
Although we wore them faithfully, in fact, no one understood these shirts
at all, and we finally gave up on them two years ago.
 Our
latest shirts are those producing the purple haze which people see before
them now. The grape colored t-shirt sports a gold emblem on the front
which looks like a squashed bottle cap and says "GCC English Department,"
and on the back we have Char's inspired "Write no wrongs!" --
also in tasteful gold lettering.
The only drawback so far to
these shirts is that if a lot of us stand together, we look a bit like the
California Raisins.
People are goaded into
wearing the shirts by the receipt of an appalling parody of a poem, song
or excerpt from great literature, composed by our own Ruthie and e-mailed
on Thursday before the Friday when the festivities begin. Ruth's
creative talents have unleashed some remarkable and memorable songs and
poetry that sent many faculty members sliding off their chairs and onto
their office floors in uncontrolled laughter.
Read
Ruth's Remarkable Parodies
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