BY JOE LINDSAY ‘19
Cancer is a powerful word.
Sadly, it’s one that some of us may be all too familiar with. It seems as if nowadays everyone knows at least one person who suffers from this horrible disease.
Nichols College first-year student Nick Anderson ‘21 and a group of fellow students have brought a movement to campus in an effort to make a positive impact on the subject: the American Cancer Society’s Relay for Life. The Nichols Relay will be held Sunday, April 8, and registration is open.
Relay for Life is a fundraising event where team members take turns walking around a track or designated path. Each event is 6-24 hours long, and each team is asked to have a member on the track at all times to signify that cancer never sleeps. Cancer patients don’t stop because they’re tired, and for one night, neither do the Relayers. While this year’s Nichols Relay won’t feature a theme, other local Relays (such as the June Greater Southbridge Relay for Life) do. For those, teams set up themed campsites at the event and continue their fundraising efforts by collecting donations for food, goods, games, and activities. The money collected counts toward a team’s overall fundraising goal, according to relayforlife.org.
Nichols students organizing the College’s first Relay for Life are looking to making a change—a big change. When Anderson came to me about the topic, I was struck by how passionate he and the rest of the coordinators are about the event, especially the cause. They spoke with passion, intent, and are on a mission to make an impact, one event at a time.
Anderson wanted to bring Relay for Life to Nichols for many reasons. He said, “My grandmother passed from cancer-related issues when I was about 6 months old, and my grandfather passed from pancreatic cancer when I was 5.”
Anderson continued, “I didn’t get involved with Relay for Life until high school. My best friend Joey’s father passed away our freshman year, and our whole community came swooping in to support him in this troubling time. So, what a few people decided to do in my school was to start a Relay for Life team. I joined, and then a year later I became a team captain alongside Joey. Then I finally came to Nichols College.”
“When I got here, I was very surprised that there wasn’t already a Relay for Life organized. I felt that Nichols was great in so many ways but realized that it needs an event like this. So that combined with my personal experiences with cancer and those around me who suffer from it drives me to make Relay the biggest annual event on campus,” Anderson said.
Relay for Life at Nichols College will take place Sunday, April 8, from 2 to 8 p.m. on Vendetti Field. For more information about how to get involved, contact Nick Anderson at nicholas.anderson@nichols.edu, and follow their Twitter and Instagram handles at @nichols_cac.
Joe Lindsay is a junior at Nichols College majoring in marketing and minoring in psychology. He is also interns for the Office of Marketing and Communications.