This past Saturday was Breastival, an annual event to raise breast cancer awareness, hosted this year by Alpha Kappa Delta Phi. It was not as successful as in previous years, with only half as many participants as last year.
The 2008 event had about 400 participants, including volunteers and performers, while this year's only had 200 participants.
"It was not what we expected, but I was very surprised when I came in and saw how the turnout was," Junior Sooji Lee, vice president of service for Alpha Kappa Delta Phi, said of the event.
The Breastival featured six different booths for educating students on breast cancer, free food donated from Krispy Kreme and Chick-Fil-A, a raffle and T-shirt sales.
Additionally, participants could decorate a pink Post-It with a pledge to maintain a healthy lifestyle and place it on a ribbon-shaped board.
The different booths featured breast cancer-detection information, a "Spot the Symptoms" game, a "kissing booth" that gave out Hershey's kisses, a Relay for Life sign-up opportunity and "Patch Dash," which used Sour Patch Kids to educate people on the National Breast and Cervical Cancer Early Detection Program (NBCCEDP).
The NBCCEDP "provides low-income, uninsured and underserved women access to timely breast and cervical cancer screening and diagnostic services," according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Web site.
"When you bring in all the circumstances, I think the event was successful. I think a great help was from Hopkins [Avon Foundation] Breast Cancer Center because a lot of the other organizations, like the American Cancer Society and Mother Supporting Daughters, weren't able to make it because of the rain," Lee said.
"I think that the help from the Hopkins Breast Cancer Center really helped with the educational aspect of the event."
Junior Tony He, president of the Hopkins chapter for Colleges Against Cancer, believes that the lower turnout this year was related to the rainy weather, but was also due to the death of junior Miriam Frankl, which had occurred the night before.
"A lot of people didn't want to come out. Many volunteers were not available after last night's accident to make the event as big as we'd like," He said.
Usually the event is held outside on the beach, where passersby are drawn to the crowds, food and performances. While there were rain dates this year, those days were also rained out.
"Last year, we had about four a cappella groups perform and probably just as many dance groups. It was a big outdoor event," He said.
"Despite the lower turnout relative to last year's Breastival, it was an educational and fun experience where students from different organizations and backgrounds came together, united under a common cause to promote breast cancer awareness in a close-knit environment in[side], safe from the cold and rain." Lee wrote in an e-mail to The News-Letter.
"This year we had to make last-minute arrangements and basically had to hold our event in the Mattin Center, Room 160, and, [as our booths didn't all fit inside] in that hallway. So considering the fact that we didn't have that much space, and that we couldn't be seen by that many people, I think it actually turned out better than we thought."
Volunteers for the event came from many other student organizations, including Colleges Against Cancer, Relay for Life, Chinese Students Association, Kappa Kappa Gamma, Sig Chi Fraternity, Delta Xi Phi and Hopkins Breast Cancer Center. Their main duties included background preparation for the event and running the informational booths.
"Funding is a lot more effective when you have a lot of organizations working together," Lee said. The event is funded mostly by grants intended for Hopkins organizations.
Lee was optimistic about the impact of the event, saying, "I think a lot of the people who came enjoyed the free food that was there and had a good time playing Jeopardy and [answering] flashcard questions about breast cancer. So I think overall we did what we wanted to do, which was to educate students about breast cancer and how to prevent it."
Cara Kaplan, a freshman in attendance, said, "I think the event is a really good cause. I came because I really like the T-shirts."
The Breastival has been an annual event since 2001 at Hopkins, where it first started. Since then, there have been Breastivals at over 100 other colleges, according to Hopkins Breast Cancer Center.
