APALSA members join 24-hour event on USC campus
—By Lori Craig
Instead of spending a recent Saturday night at a favorite restaurant or catching a new release, a dozen USC Law students walked around the USC track, lap after lap, for 24 hours.
From noon Saturday until noon Sunday, the students walked in ovals, taking breaks to rest, re-fuel or warm up in a nearby tent.
It was all for a good cause—the Relay For Life—and the group of Asian-Pacific American Law Students Association members raised $1,540 for the American Cancer Society in their second year of participating in the annual event that has been held on the USC campus since 2005.
"We had a great team," said Jameil Johnson '10. "It was cool to see the law school participate in an event with the undergraduates and the community and other graduate schools here at USC."
Relay For Life, repeated each year in thousands of locations across the country, is a 24-hour walk-a-thon to raise funds to fight cancer and raise awareness of cancer prevention and treatment. There is no limit to the size of the teams that participate, but at least one team member must be walking on the track at all times during the event.
At one point that Saturday afternoon, 2L Elena Taryor, APALSA community service co-chair, noticed a few of the participants on the track had an excessive attachment to their study guides.
"There were three students who were reading as they were walking," Taryor said. "Can you guess which program they were from?"
APALSA members hope to continue to participate in USC's Relay For Life because it offers a community service experience that's easy, convenient, and doesn't require foreign language skills as many Asian-Pacific-specific activities do, Taryor said. The group also is researching ways to advocate to the Asian-Pacific American population on behalf of the American Cancer Society.
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