Penn State Hosts Virtual Relay For Life Event
UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Relay For Life is a 12-hour, in-person walk-a-thon to honor, celebrate and mourn those who have either survived, passed away or are still fighting the horrible disease of cancer.
In a normal year, the event is held at one of the fields near Beaver Stadium. This year, however, the event was virtual due to COVID-19, and only took place for 10 hours instead of 12. It was live streamed on Saturday, April 24, from 12 p.m. to 10 p.m.
The Relay For Life team works to organize the event all year round. Junior Julia Petrucci, majoring in biobehavioral health, serves at Penn State’s Relay For Life. She talked about the long preparation for the event.
“Throughout the year leading up to our event, we do a lot of different fundraisers spreading the mission of Relay For life,” Petrucci said. “We’ve had tabling events at the HUB and different fundraisers downtown with different restaurants, such as Doggie’s, just asking for donations.”
There are many different committees involved with recruiting people for the event, planning details, working with survivors and more. Petrucci is involved in some of these committees for the event, alongside serving as the mission overall.
“My position involves working with survivors, so I am a part of the survivorship and advocacy committee, combined in with the luminaria committee,” Petrucci said. “I have worked with and reached out to survivors throughout the year as well as helped to organize the luminara ceremony for our virtual event this year.”
Petrucci and other directors tried to make the most out of a COVID year by streaming various events throughout the day, such as activity and performance hour as well as caregiver and sponsor hour.
Viewers were able to watch the event on psurelay.org and participate in various activities throughout the day on all of PSU Relay’s social media accounts.
Emily Grill is a freshman majoring in broadcast journalism. To contact her, email exg5292@psu.edu.
