Editorial: Reaching out for students to Relay

A large celebration, remaining on your feet and staying up all night is all in a night’s fight against cancer at Rider University.

As we progress through the beginning of spring and toward the end of the school year, we also approach Rider’s fourth annual Relay for Life event, which will commence tomorrow, March 24. Though it is relatively new, starting spring of 2009, it has become one of the biggest student events on Rider’s campus.

While Relay for Life is lengthy and can be tiring, it is an important cause that everyone should support and experience. In order to garner more student participation this year and increase the anticipation, the start time has been scheduled for later in the day and there will be more entertainment throughout the course of the evening than there has been in years past.

Relay for Life is an overnight event held in the Student Recreation Center (SRC), where students form teams and walk around the track all night to raise money and awareness for cancer research. Teams work to collect donations to raise the most money toward the cause in the weeks and months before the actual event.

At last year’s Relay event, more than 1,000 participants attended, making up 60 teams. Each year the goal is to have even more students and community members sign up and participate. Relay for Life Chair Lindsay Galbraith announced that the start time of the event was pushed to later in the day, starting at 8 p.m. Saturday night and ending at 8 a.m. Sunday morning, in an effort to attract more people. Having the function at a later time may allow students who couldn’t make it in time to previous Relays attend this year’s.

While staying up all night long is not mandatory, it is highly encouraged. In the past, many students have stayed for the Saturday evening part of the event and then left before it is over.

This year, in an effort to entice more students to attend and stay all the way through, Rider’s Relay for Life committee has promised a more hands-on night with entertainment throughout the whole 12 hours. With things like musical performances, contests and food available, teams will be able to better endure the evening. Students will be more inclined to relay longer if there is entertainment to keep them awake and going. Constantly having things to do can make the event seem to move along quicker. The temporary weariness and time spent at Relay for Life is worth it for the cause we are promoting.

Relay for Life honors Rider’s cancer survivors with the survivors’ lap, which kicks off the night. This event is important for all students to experience at least once in their college career because it puts the seriousness of the disease into perspective. We all need to fight together.

“Celebrate, Remember and Fight back,” is the inspirational motto for Relay for Life. If we can get more students to celebrate the cause at Rider, we can help others remember what we are working toward and all fight back against cancer together.

This weekly editorial expresses the majority opinion of The Rider News. This week’s editorial was written by the Opinion Editor, Kristy Grinere.