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Vol. XCIV No. 25
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A student voice of Saint Louis University since 1919
Thursday, April 23, 2015
Relay for Life: An exercise in resilience Fundraising for cancer research, 12 years in the making
By EMILY HIGGINBOTHAM Staff Writer
On Saturday, April 18, members of the SLU community gathered on the track at Hermann Stadium for the American Cancer Society’s Relay For Life. In Relay’s 12th year of raising money and awareness for the fight against
cancer at SLU, the event had 1,670 participants and raised $167,346.64, which was around $25,000 more than the year before. “Our Event Leadership Team worked so hard all year to plan this event, and it was so powerful to see all of that hard work pay off on Saturday,” said Relay co-chair Erin Steiner, who has been in-
volved with the organization since high school. “We made our focus sharing the mission of Relay For Life with the SLU community, and our team did an incredible job doing that all year long.” The event was kicked off by the annual survivor lap. Cancer survivors from the SLU community walked in one direction on the track
while their caregivers went in the opposite direction, meeting in the middle to release balloons, which allowed the rest of the participants to join in the first official lap. For the duration of the 12-hour event, participants could continue to walk laps, watch the live entertainment of the various SLU perfor-
mance groups and purchase goods sold by the participating teams. After the sun went down, the participants gathered in the stands again for the Luminaria ceremony. “This is where we have the chance to reflect on why we See “Relay” on Page 3
Courtesy of Michelle Peltier
Jay Bryant: Presidentelect gearing to go By PAUL BRUNKHORST Associate News Editor
Jay Bryant, the incoming SGA president for the 20152016 school year, has been busy as he readies himself for office, but he feels confident – both in his incoming leadership team and in the University administration. “I feel great,” he said. “I’m really excited for our team … I’m excited about the future of the administration. I actually had the pleasure of meeting Dr. Brickhouse, the new provost, [recently]. A couple of students met with her, and she’s very open to new ideas, and she’s definitely a listening ear.” Indeed, spring has been a busy time of the year for the upper echelons of SLU’s management. In early May, the University will release its strategic plan for the future, and Bryant sees this as an opportunity for student input to be heard. Bryant said: “The question is: why should [students] care about the future SLU? And I think that that’s a huge role that SGA will have, saying ‘here’s how you can better SLU for the future Billikens and also how you can be a part of this process to improve SLU in general.’” This being said, though Bryant sees SGA has having a big role to play in voicing student input during the strategic planning process, he thinks that his experiences outside of SGA have actually been beneficial to his future role as president. Tak-
ing a year off, after two years within the organization have, he said, given him the fresh perspective of an outsider; having been involved with a chartered student organization this year – Relay for Life – he has seen ways in which SGA can better communicate with CSOs – and all students. “This year has really been eye-opening,” Bryant said. “I have diminished that SGA tunnel vision maybe that I formed freshman and sophomore year. Now I know more of the communication needs that students want from SGA and vice versa … because when I was in SGA it [was like] we know all this information and the senators know all of this information, and it’s not that it was confidential information. It’s just ‘how do we push this information out to all the students?’ And so, my eyes have been opened to communicating more, especially about the strategic plan.” Bryant, a communication major and marketing minor, hopes that ultimately his experiences – both inside and outside of SGA – will help him land a job after his career at SLU comes to a close next May; he has no immediate plans for grad school. But he has cherished his time at SLU, and he sees great value in the University’s mission – particularly its stress on searching for truth. The pursuit of truth, Bry-
From internment to independence: Holocaust survivor, ‘silent for sixty years,’ speaks By MEREDITH HARGIS Staff Writer
On Monday, April 20, the Jewish Student Association invited SLU students and faculty to the Center for Global Citizenship to hear from Ben Fainer, a Holocaust survivor. Born in Poland, Fainer was only nine years old when the Nazis uprooted him and his family. Fainer and his
father were taken to a labor survived. Mr. Fainer put it camp, while simply, “I was his mother young, so I For six years, in six made it.” He and siblings were taken to and his father different Auschwitz , were the only concentration never to be survivors out camps, each day of their 250 heard from again. For six he planned the life family memyears, in six he would live if he bers throughdifferent labor out Poland. survived. concentration Liberated by camps, each the 23rd dividay he planned sion of the US the life he would live if he Army, he was only 16 years
old and had a lot of life to live. The Nazis may have embittered his adolescence, but his life post-Holocaust broke out of its former darkness. After being liberated, Fainer went to live with family in Dublin, where he met his wife, Susan. They moved to Canada, and eventually to
See “Survivor” on Page 3
Ryan Quinn / Photo Editor
See “Bryant” on Page 3
Survivor: Ben Fainer, who worked in a Nazi labor camp during his childhood, was invited to speak at SLU by the university’s Jewish Student Association. His mother and his siblings were sent to Auschwitz when he was nine.