A Look Back at Relay For Life
As I walk around the basketball courts, glowing white paper bags stand tall on the ground, labeled with the names of different people who are currently, or once were, in the fight against cancer. I try to read as many names as I possibly can.
Posters decorate the walls of the gym, filled with interesting and informative facts about different types of cancer. Black outlines of people that are stuck on the walls tell touching stories of the times people first learned of their loved ones’ cancers. Several booths are surrounded by people laughing and having a good time.
Last Saturday, April 26th, students and faculty all came together in the basketball courts of Love Gym to take part in the annual event known as Relay for Life. Relay for Life is a fundraising event for the American Cancer Society hosted by ESSO. A wide variety of students, dorms, sports teams and clubs ran booths with different ideas and activities for people to take part in.
For example, the cycling team set up a game, where there was a cyclist cycling on some sort of a treadmill, and people would pay tickets to throw balls at him or her, and try to get the cyclist to fall off the bike. Besides that, people could get ma ssages, participate in donut eating competitions or play video games.
Moreover, there were many student performances throughout the night, including shows by Tommy Song, Joohwan Kim, Kwasi Oppong-Badu, among others.
Relay for Life is definitely a great event, and one of the most important ones at Exeter. It requires event co-heads and a whole planning committee to work tirelessly to organize the event during the preceding months. However, since it’s only once a year, a lot of people do not learn about cancer, its causes and its consequences.
Cancer is not something that should be taken lightly. It is an abnormal growth of cells that leads to the formation of lumps or masses of tissues called tumors (except for leukemia). These tumors can grow and interfere with the digestive, nervous and circulatory systems, and they can release hormones that alter body functions. When tumors successfully spread to other parts of the body and grow, they invade and destroy other healthy tissues. This is a very difficult condition to treat, and currently there is no cure for it.
Cancer affects many people around the world, and even a lot of people at Exeter. There are more than 100 types of cancer and I think it would be extremely useful, if maybe once a term, we did something to learn more about it and raise its awareness. There are several small things we could do, that would hopefully not detract attention from the event or attendance of Relay for Life.
We could set up a table in the Academy Center, where students give out pamphlets with information about things like prevention, treatment, support or survivorship. Once a year, we could get an assembly speaker to come and talk to us about cancer, maybe someone in the research field or a cancer survivor. This could be done during the week of World Cancer Day (which was celebrated this year on February 4th).
Two or three times a term, the dining halls could put up pamphlets at the tables, the way they do for holidays and religious events, giving students and faculty some information about cancer, such as debunking common myths or simply sharing basic information about a specific cancer.
The more awareness we raise, the more people will know about it: how to prevent it, treat it and handle it. Relay for Life does a great job with this, but I think a few smaller things could also really make a difference. Maybe as we progress, we can additionally raise awareness for other causes, too, such as AIDS and cardiovascular diseases.