On September 6th, dozens of Kent students gathered at the entrance of the North Court. They were waiting for the Tag Sale, a charity sale annually organized by REACH, thanks to the efforts of Mrs. Sokolnicki and a number of student volunteers.

As the clock ticked to 7:00 p.m., students flooded into the gym. There were all sorts of practical items for sale: mirrors, couches, lamps, stationary sets, fans, fridges, and even clothes. At the clothing section, students were searching for winter sweaters, blazers, dresses, and jeans. Oi Srinalnard ’20 was looking for a dress to wear to formal occasions, and she found a black sundress with shining diamonds and a blazer. She says, “I like this dress. It’s very fancy.”

The couch auction was, as always, the main attraction. To participate in the auction, students wrote their names on a sheet with their prices corresponding to the couch they wanted. According to Mrs. Sokolnicki, the couch auction is a fairly recent invention: “Before it [this auction] was just a price on the couch, and the big guys shoved everyone out of the way and grabbed the couches, and so we tried to make it a little bit more fair.”

According to Mrs. Sokolnicki, everything in the sale was donated by students last year, and the leftovers go to various charity organizations. The remaining dress clothes were donated to a program called “Dress for Success,” which gives clothes for interviews for people coming out of prison or welfare. Mrs. Sokolnicki explains, “They have interviews set up for job training but they may not have clothes to wear during the interview, so they can go to these places and get free interview clothes, like a suit, to wear.” Blankets and towels were donated to animal shelters, so that they could wrap the animals up during the winter. And shoes were donated to a charity organization called Soles4Souls, who provide shoes to natural disaster victims.

By 8:30 p.m., most students had left, and student volunteers were closing up: eleven of sixteen mirrors, a third of the lamps, and half of the fridges were sold. The tag sale remained open over the weekend and ultimately raised over $6,000.