F E B 2 3 , 2 0 1 8 | L E U K E M I A A N D LY M P H O M A
What are you doing that is different from other students this year in Students of the Year? The tactic I’m trying to go through is not as many sponsorships but personal or individual donations, and the little stuff will build up. I’m not sure how other people are going about it.
Sophomore Meera Murthy
How did you personally get involved? My dad actually passed away from leukemia so I decided to get involved with the society and figure out ways I could make a difference and make sure nobody has to go through what I had to go through.
What impact do you want to have? I wanna raise awareness, obviously, but also that Generation Z, our generation, can make a difference in their own way. I wish all the candidates would bring awareness to this cause since it’s a good cause. JAMES YIN | Q&A, PHOTO
Q & A What are you doing differently from other students in the campaign? We get to create teams, and a lot of people choose adults, but I chose friends at Carmel… if students are asking, a lot of parents are more likely to donate to students than they are to an adult because it’s pretty awesome to see students doing something like that.
What influenced you to try to become Student of the Year? I know a few people that have been affected by leukemia and lymphoma, just through all their stories, I decided that I wanted to make a difference and try to raise money to help those diseases.
Junior Lucy Salter
What do you think about the outreach? I’m trying to get other people involved and get other people to know about the Leukemia and Lymphoma society because they are running clinical trials to cure cancer, and they’re advocating for patients and just getting the awareness out there about the society is pretty much helping find a cure… I would say the most important thing is just spreading the word, getting other people involved, because once more people in Carmel, which is a really huge community, know about it, then the bigger impact we can make.
BY THE NUMBERS
26.7 percent of all cancer cases in people younger than 20 were cases of leukemia from 2008 to 2012
4.3 estimated percent of all cancers in 2017 were of lymphoma
3.6 estimated percent of all cancers in 2017 were of leukemia LLS.ORG, SEER. CANCER.GOV | SOURCE
JAMES YIN | Q&A, PHOTO
Q & A How did you become involved with the campaign, and what was your motivation behind joining?
Junior Reagan Markland
So, my mom started working at the LLS about five years ago … while she worked there, I got to meet all kinds of people. I volunteered there a lot just because I knew I could volunteer there and it was a good way to get my hours and get involved with that stuff, and I just found all the stories I was learning so inspirational.
I have a lot of younger neighbors and my little sisters who are watching me do this, and I hope that when they grow up, maybe they don’t do the exact same thing, but I hope they do something similar, and I hope they find avenues to give back to their community. People laugh, or they think I’m joking or unrealistic, but my two honest goals are for my children to grow up in a world that does not have cancer and for our generation to be the one that cures cancer.
How has the campaign been going so far? It’s been almost a year now that I’ve been working on this and getting ready for it and so far it’s gone well. The things that I’m learning are incredible, the people that I’m meeting are incredible and I feel so blessed that I get to learn and take all this in while giving back to the community.
How do you hope to influence the community through the campaign?
ANGELA LI | Q&A, PHOTO
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