Project 100, the community service committee of the Student Union, is planning to host the American Cancer Society’s Relay for Life, said committee chair Liz Russo at last night’s meeting in Photonics room 211.
According to Russo, the University team would be the first-ever college student group to organize a Relay for Life event.
“Usually, the American Cancer Society uses college and high school facilities as a location when the students aren’t around,” Russo said. “Here, the students are the group.”
Russo, a junior in the College of Arts and Sciences, and College of General Studies sophomore Jaron Friedman proposed the idea last night to Senate members, urging them to support and join their project.
“We need people to be emotionally involved,” Russo said. “I know a lot of people who are somehow related to someone who has cancer — whether it’s friends or family. I was looking for something to bring Boston University together and this is it.”
Russo said she doesn’t only want student involvement, but also for faculty and administration to be in involved in Relay for Life, a 12-hour walk which would be completed by teams of 10 to 15 people.
The specifics of the event, such as a date, time and place, have yet to be decided, Russo said. She intends to hold the event the first weekend in May at the area around Marsh Chapel and BU Beach. Additional planning meetings with the BU administration and the American Cancer Society are pending.
The walk would begin at BU Beach, continue to Marsh Chapel and then return to BU Beach, Friedman said.
If there is not enough space to accommodate those involved, the Relay for Life might move to Nickerson Field, Friedman said.
For the event, one member of a relay team will walk for a chosen amount of time, and then pass the walking to the next person, Russo said.
Friedman and Russo met with Student Activities Office Director Alan Ward last Friday to discuss the event.
“He had some reservations about it because we didn’t have specifics,” she said. “But, he is very excited about it.”
Russo said there should be no objections from the administration, saying she was given approval from Ward to progress with her plans for a BU Relay for Life group.
Russo said she hopes to gain a lot of support from the BU community, which would push the number of Project 100’s members over its goal of 100.
“We’re going to recruit groups from all over BU — sports teams, fraternities, sororities, clubs and any individual student who wants to be involved,” she said.
This is an account occasionally used by the Daily Free Press editors to post archived posts from previous iterations of the site or otherwise for special circumstance publications. See authorship info on the byline at the top of the page.
