A professor takes on a new experience by becoming the advisor for the Book Owls Club.
The Book Owls Club emerged from the recent loss of English Society, becoming the singular literature club on campus.
“They came up to me and said ‘hey, would you like to be the new faculty advisor?” said the new advisor for the club. “And then I said sure, not knowing what it entailed.”
Professor Tom Eiland has taken on a new role and he has plans to provide the right advisement for the club to continue to grow.
Eiland said the Book Owls club celebrated their triumph of becoming a new club by promoting it through flyers around campus.
“When you’re trying to start something from scratch; having somebody who is good at getting people to pay attention to something that didn’t exist before is a great benefit,” Eiland said.
Eiland said the new club has started to expand. He said the first meeting had three attendees, one of those attendees left the club, but three more people joined at the following meeting.
Alisandra Duran, president of the Book Owls, said that she became president because “someone had to step-up.”
“As president I delegate duties to my vice president and my secretary as of now,” Duran said.
Duran said she hopes the club is able to run elections for club positions once they have more members.
Layla Jimenez, member of the Book Owls Club and aspiring secretary for the club, said she heard about the club through the president in the Children’s Literature class taught by Eiland.
“I just thought it would be a really cool thing to do, to be able to hear what other people think about literature, and to get a discussion going is really important,” Jimenez said.
Duran said she hopes the club will host events on campus during the process of finding their identity.
“Our current long-term goal is to make the poetry contest happen annually. That’s what’s pushing us forward, “ Duran said.
“We’re a club placed in LI 120, a hidden classroom right around the corner of the library; it’s the perfect spot for introverts who like exploring literature,” Duran said.
Duran also said she thinks the club is for anyone interested in conversations about all types of literature mediums, whether that be books, graphic novels, poems, and even songs.
“I like having people to talk to about it [literature], and I feel like that’s the whole idea of the club,” Duran said.
Eiland said that his job is to advise on two levels: talking to, “…x, y and z” in order to organize the events and offer general advice for activities such as how and where to host them.
“I give advice, that’s why I’m called an advisor, “ Eiland said.
Eiland said he is also in charge of protecting the school’s reputation by making sure, “the club is not doing something in the name of Citrus College,” that would be inappropriate or unacceptable for the school.
“Let’s see what happens. It’ll be an adventure, “ Eiland said.
