dailygamecock.com UNIVERSITY OF SOUTH CAROLINA
VOL. 107, NO. 32 ● SINCE 1908
MONDAY, APRIL 4, 2016
Carolina Cup hosts surprise wedding
Suicide prevention walks ‘Out of the Darkness’ Emily Barber / THE DAILY GAMECOCK
Emily Barber @EMILYRISA
A small horde of students, family and friends marched around campus Sunday afternoon for the fourth annual Out of the Darkness suicide prevention walk. The Out of the Darkness prog r a m , wh ic h ho s t s campus and communit y walks, is a branch of the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention. The 187 participants registered for USC’s walk managed to raise over $14,000 for AFSP. Fou r t h-ye a r h i s t or y st udent Mallor y Suggs served as 2016 walk chair and has been involved since the first walk her freshman year. That year, she was only a participant and then moved up to the planning committee the next two years. Suggs shared her own struggle with depression a nd spoke about how her f r iends a nd fam ily managed to pull her out
of that dark time in her l ife. She sa id t hat t he resources provided by the university are incredibly helpf ul, but she t hink s that a student organization would be t he next step towards furthering suicide prevention and awareness. “We would focus solely on suicide prevention ... and getting information out there, learning the warning signs of suicide, that sort of thing,” Suggs said. The process of e st abl ish i ng a st udent o r g a n i z at io n t h r o u g h AFSP is in the works and hopefully will become a reality by this upcoming fall semester. “I k now t hat t here’s a lot of support for it,” Suggs said. “This walk has grown exponentially this year, and it’s been amazing, and we need to keep that momentum going.” The event opened with Suggs’ stor y and a few br ief rem a rk s. O ne of the opening speakers was Rebecca Ca ldwel l, t he
director of Strategic Health Ser v ice s for Hea lt hy Carolina. Caldwell said that her experience with depression and suicide, through her father, gave her an understanding of how to implement suicide prevention at Carolina. “We must take care of each other, spend extra time with each other and reach out to resources,” she said. “And one of the absolute best ways that we can blot out the darkness is not only just being there for other, but to practice self-care every day.” Another of the opening speakers was Student Body President Michael Parks, who briefly discussed the new Student Government initiative of peer listeners, w h ic h w i l l b eg i n t h i s upcoming fall. “This will be a program t hat allows st udents to listen to other students who are going t hrough problems, students who are considering suicide or even going through a depressed
time in their life,” he said. Park s also br ief ly referenced a new campaign aimed at mental health and suicide prevention whose slogan is “Be real, Be there,” and encourages students to be involved in the mental wellness of themselves and their friends. “Always assume that you are the only one who will reach out,” he said. “One su ic ide at tempt is one suicide attempt too many.” The route of the walk traced the outside of the Horseshoe, took Pendleton, Senate and Barnwell streets down to Capstone and cut back to and around the Horseshoe again, ending where it had beg u n at Currell College. After the walk itself was over, Helen P r idg e n , A F SP S out h Carolina area director, gave her remarks on the event and offered her thanks to t he commit tee and t he volunteers.
The 81st annual Carolina Cup at t rac ted it s usua l crowd of spectators and law e n f o r c e m e nt a s w e l l a s a surprise wedding this year. More than 50,000 people, accord i ng to T he St ate, showed up to the Springdale R acecou rse i n Ca mden on Saturday for the kickoff of the nat ional steeplechase horse racing season. This crowd is traditionally made up of about half students, and not included a re t he hu nd reds of law enforcement officers that were present in order to enforce alcohol laws. According to C a mde n Pol ic e C h ief Jo e Floyd, an average of 180 to 200 people are criminally charged each year at the Cup. Most USC students spent the Cup in the area called College Park where students put up tents and have music and dancing. Many attend the event for horse racing while some may not even see a horse the whole time, but one couple came this year to celebrate a surprise w e d d i n g. Je f f a n d E m i l y Morgan got engaged 10 days ago and surprised their friends a nd fa m i ly by ma k i ng t he Carolina Cup their wedding venue. They kept it a surprise by hiding the cake, flower girl and ring bearers, and they had the ceremony right before the fi rst race at 1:30 pm. — Compiled by Brittany Franceschina
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Open Book Series to highlight award-winning author Doerr Alondra De La Rosa @THEGAMECOCK
Award-w in ning novel “A ll t he Light We Cannot See,” by Anthony Doerr, will be highlighted this week as part of the Open Book Series. Winner of the 2015 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the 2015 Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction, “All the Light We Cannot See” is a novel unlike any other that follows the intersecting lives of a blind French
girl and a German soldier during World War II. A talk by professor Tony Jarrells about the book will be held in the Hollings Special Collections Library on Monday at 6 p.m. To follow this talk, Doerr will lead a discussion about the book Wednesday at 6 p.m. in the Law School Auditorium. In addition to this book, Doerr is the author of story collections and a memoir. His work has earned four
O. Henry Prizes and won various awards around the world. One of his collections of short stories won the most prestigious short story prize in the U.S. in 2010, the Story Prize. Doerr’s style in “All the Light We Cannot See” hosts a balance between imagination and observation, with characters’ lives interwoven cleverly to bring out his ultimate theme of people t r y ing to be good to one another despite all else.
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The Open Book Series is hosted by t he English Depart ment and allows students to hear directly from authors on the writing process. This upcoming week is the third of the series. There will be novels from different authors focused on each week until the end of the Open Book Series on April 20. Other authors in the 2016 series are Nuruddin Farah, Jenny Offill, Celeste Ng, Paul Auster and Elise Blackwell.
RECAP Page 8 Madison MacDonald / THE DAILY GAMECOCK