College President James Wright was featured as "Person of The Week" Friday evening on ABC's "World News with Charles Gibson." In the three-and-a-half-minute segment highlighting his work with United States Marines, Wright said, "I often tell my students here that they're all privileged to be here and with privilege goes responsibility. We have a responsibility to reach out and to help out." Wright was recognized for helping to implement a college-guidance program for Marines. "I realized that they had questions that it was not clear where they could get answers," he said. Wright raised $350,000 with help from the American Council of Education to hire college counselors at three of the largest military hospitals in the country. Three Purple Heart-winning Marines are expected to matriculate with the Class of 2011 in the fall. "They will all learn a lot here, these Marines coming, but we will all learn a lot from them," Wright said.
Relay for Life, an annual fundraiser for the American Cancer Society held at the Leverone Field house, raised a little over $85,000 this weekend -- up from last year's $79,000. The event, which began at 7 p.m. on Friday and lasted through the night until early Saturday morning, saw 695 registered participants. Dartmouth has hosted the event for the past three years. "One thing I was really happy about was that we were able to bring out a ton of Dartmouth students while branching out into other areas of the Hanover community," this year's event chair Paul DuPuy '07 said in an e-mail. The top two fundraising teams were from the Tuck School of Business, but other notable participants came from Hanover High School as well as a local bed and breakfast. Live performances, music and movies entertained the participants.
Lose the Shoes, a biannual fundraising and awareness event for Grassroot Soccer, took place on the Green this Saturday. Some 175 students participated in the three-on-three barefoot soccer tournaments, which raised over $8,000 for Grassroot Soccer's HIV Prevention Program. The program pairs African professional soccer players with adolescents in Zimbabwe, Zambia, Botswana and South Africa to raise AIDS awareness. The funds collected will be used to start the GRS program in three new schools in Zimbabwe. A team of Dartmouth students has been working toward nationalizing the event, and hope to have 25 colleges holding similar events by fall 2007, 100 colleges by 2010, and a total of $1 million raised by the 2010 World Cup. The next Lose the Shoes tournament at Dartmouth will be held early this October.
