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Exhibits, entertainers to participate in Market Square Art Fair
Friday, April 15, 2011
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Issue 61 I N D E P E N D E N T
PUBLISHED SINCE 1906
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Vol. 116 S T U D E N T
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UT professor leads Relay for Life endeavor UT chapter seeks to raise $60,000 for research, patient care through events this weekend Zac Ellis Editor-in-Chief Bonnie Hufford has a message for students, faculty and staff at UT. Want to have fun while helping a good cause? Try staying up all night this weekend. Hufford, instructor of journalism and electronic media and public relations at UT, serves as the faculty adviser for the UT chapter of Relay For Life, an all-night event aimed at raising cancer awareness and funding cancer research. Each year, nearly 3.5 million people participate in the American Cancer Society’s event worldwide, which raises more than $450 million. The event will take place tonight from 6 p.m. until 6 a.m. at Circle Park on campus. “Relay is a great, fun event,” Hufford, who has served as the UT’s Relay adviser since 2003, said. “I invited my class this morning. We’ve got live bands all night. There’s food, there’s activities. I don’t even realize I’m up all night.” The fundraising event has been a staple of UT’s campus community since 2004, when Hufford helped launch the university’s first Relay. The event is widespread throughout the country, and when approached about advising a UT chapter of the event in 2003, Hufford, a 30-year survivor of leukemia, couldn’t turn it down. “They said, “We think we’d like to start a Relay for Life event on the UT campus, and we think we’d like for you to help with that,” Hufford said. “I said, in my typical Ms. Bonnie fashion, ‘Sure, I’d be happy to do that.’” Hufford was aware of other Relays around the Knoxville area. Several branches of the event existed in East Tennessee, like a West Knoxville chapter, a North Knoxville chapter and a downtown chapter, but UT did not have
a campus event despite Relay’s popularity among other universities. Without question, Hufford knew she had a job to do. “They knew my history,” Hufford said. “My
goal at $60,000 for this year, and Hufford said the effort is well on its way. “For this weekend, we are already at $40,000,” Hufford said. The list of activities scheduled for this
nearly 30-year history of having a chronic form of leukemia. I like to volunteer and do things for the cancer society. “It was just a perfect matchup.” Since UT’s first Relay in 2004, the event has become the campus’s largest fundraising effort. The volunteer staff set its fundraising
year’s Relay is as extensive as it is varied. Paying homage to this year’s Nickelodeonstyle Relay logo, students can pay for the opportunity to “slime” their friends. A moon bounce obstacle course and a Dr. Pepper Pong Tournament will also be included. Rapper Swiperboy is even scheduled to make an
appearance, as well. “And of course, we’ll have a cornhole tournament, karaoke, Relay games, food, raffles, singing competitions, things like that,” Ashley Rae Needham, senior in journalism and electronic media and communications chair for UT’s chapter of Relay for Life, said. Survivors are encouraged to attend the event, and money raised will benefit those striving to find a cure. “So much of the funding that we raise goes right back into patient education, patient services and research,” Hufford said. Needham said the support of Hufford makes planning the whole event that much easier. From helping with the event’s logistics to running necessary errands, Hufford serves as a jack-of-all-trades to volunteering students. “Her dedication to the American Cancer Society and to Relay for Life has really inspired a lot of the team members to give our all for this project,” Needham said. “People like Bonnie really benefit from what this event has to offer.” Hufford admitted her personality just wouldn’t allow her to stand by and watch. “In the past, the adviser was more of a figurehead, just somebody who helped the kids get what they needed,” Hufford said. “I, of course, just had to take it to the next level.” Everyone within the community is encouraged to take part in Relay, Hufford said, because cancer has affected every single person in some way. “Most people, if you really sit down and talk to students or faculty or people from the community that show it, it seems that everybody has a connection somehow,” Hufford said. “It touches everyone, it seems. Everyone can identify with that.” UT’s chapter of Relay For Life kicks off at 6 p.m. tonight at Circle Park and will continue until 6 a.m. on Saturday.
Diversity featured in annual festival James Dickson Staff Writer The I-House will host its 26th annual International Festival from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. today on the UC Plaza. This free and public event will feature 18 decorated booths providing authenticallycooked foods, cultural drinks, jewelry and clothing items for purchase. A wide variety of cultural entertainment begins outside on stage at 11 a.m. and will continue until 2:15 p.m. “Every year, we have about 3,000 people come and go,” Qi Fu, graduate assistant and IHouse coordinator of the Culture Night Committee, said. Fu said the Native American booth at last year’s festival in Thompson Boling Arena provided samples of cooked deer meat. She recommended people get to the event early to sample the foods and drinks. Booths will have displays and educational material from many cultures, including Chinese, Indian, Japanese, Native American, Filipino, African, Korean, Thai, Bangladeshi, Iranian, Mexican and more. Other booths to attend will be the Bolivian booth, which is new this year, the Muslim Student Association, Library Diversity and the I-House. The IHouse booth will provide free drinks, water, program information. T-shirts will be sold for $5. Entertainment will include two juggling acts by UT graduate Doug McCaughan, Chinese acrobatics, a mariachi band, belly dancing, Indian classical dancing and Caribbean salsa dancing.
“Last year, there was no mariachi band, juggling or Caribbean salsa dancing, and this year I’m looking forward to all three performances,” Rajesh Jena, graduate student in food science and technology at UT, said. New to the festival this year is the Celebration of Civility and Community. Chancellor Jimmy Cheek will speak at this celebration at 11:30 a.m. According to a press release, the ten principle words that this campaign highlights are inclusivity, diversity, dialogue, collegiality, respect, knowledge, integrity, learning, awareness and responsiveness. This campaign began last semester in response to an increase of intolerant incidents and biased actions on campus. The cultural booths will be judged, based on their food, displays and educational material, by students from a UT nutrition class . How the booths greet and interact with people will also be factored in by the judges. The firstplace winners will receive certificates, and their names on a plaque inside the I-House. Booths are divided into two categories for judging: large and small booths. In the large group of last year’s International Festival, the African Student Association received first place, and the Korean Student Association received second. In the small booth category of last year’s festival, the Thai Student Club received first place, and the Bangladesh Student Association received second place. The UC’s public-parking garage is open for the event. Ticket stubs can be stamped at the I-House booth for a flat rate of $5. This is the International House’s last big event for the semester.
Search for missing student continues Associated Press
Tia Patron • The Daily Beacon
Visiting print artist Lynn Allen works on a stone for a lithography print. Allen has been at UT this week working in the print shop with the help of UT grad students.
PARSONS, Tenn. — Searchers in western Tennessee were looking Thursday for a nursing student who was last seen being dragged from her house by a man wearing camouflage in what authorities described as a home invasion and abduction. About 50 people had gathered in Parsons to resume the search for Holly Bobo, 20, after about 250 volunteers searched the rural area around her home Wednesday. Bobo’s 25-year-old brother told investigators he saw a man dragging her across the carport at her family home and toward a wooded area, the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation said. Bobo’s brother was inside the house and the reported kidnapping was outside in the rural area of small, modest homes about 100 miles northeast of Memphis, the TBI said. A spokeswoman would not give more details of what the brother told them. “We would never expect anything like that,” Decatur County Sheriff Roy Wyatt said. “And I think that’s why it is so devastating to all of us.”
Investigators are looking into the possibility that someone may have checked out Bobo’s home before the abduction and are asking neighbors to report any unusual people or cars in the area. Since news of the case spread, neighbors and people in nearby communities have poured out to help search, bring food and support family members who are holding together reasonably well, Decatur County Mayor Michael Smith said. Authorities used dogs and a helicopter in the search Wednesday. Bobo is 5 feet 3 inches tall and weighs 110 pounds. She was last seen Wednesday morning wearing a pink shirt and light blue jeans. Smith said the close-knit community has little crime, so word of this has come as a shock. Parsons has about 2,500 residents. Bud Grimes, a spokesman for the University of Tennessee at Martin, said Bobo was studying to be a licensed practical nurse through the Tennessee Technology Center. She was taking classes at the university’s extension campus in Parsons, but was not a UT-Martin student. Bobo’s mother is an elementary school teacher and her father works for a tree service company. See PARSONS on Page 3