The annual Relay for Life walk is coming up fast! This year, it will be held on Friday, April 25, from 6 pm to 8 am the next morning. Every year, huge numbers of people gather into teams on the ’86 Field for the Relay for Life and take turns walking laps around the track in order to raise money for the American Cancer Society.

Over the next two weeks, students, faculty, staff, and community members will learn more about the Relay’s exciting events, including performances by some awesome bands, a comedian, and even some swing dancing! People will learn about the great initiatives that the American Cancer Society promotes with the money raised, including support of cancer research and advocacy for cancer patients.

But these are not the reasons that I Relay.

Last August, my father was diagnosed, right before I came back to RPI. Stage three colon cancer. Those four words felt like a punch in the gut. Before then, cancer had always subtly lurked through my life. It claimed my grandfather’s life when I was very young, and family friends waged their own quiet battles with the disease. But now all of a sudden, it came and seized my life without warning. I had to go back to school when treatment began; I was not able to be there to support my father through the surgery or the six exhausting months of chemotherapy. Hearing about the treatment’s draining effects over the phone, I felt helpless being 200 miles away in front of an engineering textbook. Gladly, nearly eight months later, I think that we can officially call Dad a cancer survivor.

We all have an anecdote of our own. A grandparent lost, a classmate’s thinning hair, a parent gone too soon. When we put our stories together, the effects of cancer become much more disturbing. Over one million people will be diagnosed this year, one-quarter of the deaths in the U.S. will be from cancer, and 64 people die from cancer every minute. We simply cannot afford to ignore the toll cancer takes on our families, friends, and the larger community.

And we should not forget that cancer not only damages the body, but also can smother one’s spirit. Cancer reaches beyond the people it directly infects. It got into my head, made me lose hope, and attacked my faith. The negativity that cancer can bring into a person’s life—that it brought into my own life—strikes at a level beyond the reach of modern medicine.

This is why I Relay. I Relay because at the Relay for Life we fight for the spirit. While most of us will not devote our lives to the search for a cure, we Relay because it represents one thing that we can do to help. You do not need to be an expert in oncology to work for the healing of the spirit. You do not need to be independently wealthy to sponsor the hope and faith of a community. When we Relay, we strengthen the spirit. We bring back hope and faith. Most of all, we prove to ourselves and to those around us that these ideas are more contagious than cancer’s gloom.

On April 25, RPI fights back. We will come together as a community to show the strength of our numbers. Together, we will walk to heal the spirit. Together, we will walk as a symbol of our dedication to each other. Together, we will walk to honor those currently fighting their own battles and to remember those who have been lost.

I encourage you to stop by on the 25th. Even if you do not get on a team, come and see what Relay for Life is all about and check out the information that we will have on diagnosis, early detection, treatment, and more. Drop by to catch our community’s survivors taking their victory lap around the track. Come walk a few laps with us yourself, and you will feel the spirit that I am talking about.

Please visit the link to our website, http://events.cancer.org/RFLrpiNY/, where you can sign up and create or join teams for the event. Readers should also feel free to pick up information from our tables in the Darrin Communications Center and purchase Luminaria bags to remember those lost or recognize those who are currently battling cancer.

Jordan Hagaman