On May 23, Youth Community Service (YCS)/Interact club chaperones sent Gunn’s Relay For Life (RFL) team home from the event at midnight due to student behavior issues.

“When the Stanford police informed us that one of our students had been arrested and jailed for trespassing and climbing a construction crane, we decided that it would be best to pull the team out of the relay for the security of the students present,” RFL chaperone and YCS/Interact advisor Jordan Huizing said in an e-mail message. “In addition to being concerned for our students’ immediate safety, we were also concerned with the future of the event. If this was how people expected to behave at Relay, obviously it could not continue in the future. We wanted to send a clear message that this is not acceptable behavior.”

According to RFL chaperone Lisa Wu, the student-chaperone ratio and the set-up of the field were possible factors that could have contributed to the incident. “It was impossible for us to keep track of everyone all the time considering how many students were present,” Wu said. “Also, the event was outdoors and there are no fences around the lawn. It’s pretty much all open and the whole campus is accessible.”

Though initial reactions to the closure of the event were a combination of disappointment and shock, students understand the chaperones’ decision to withdraw from the event. “We were all definitely sad about having to leave early, but I do think that the advisors made the right choice to take the Gunn students away from the event,” YCS/Interact president junior Vivian Shen said. “YCS is really a team so a decision made by one person can impact a lot of others.”

YCS/Interact board member junior Steve Zhou believes that the success of the event should be measured by what the team and event were able achieve, and not only by the unexpected withdrawal. “We have to remember that this event is mostly about promoting cancer awareness and fundraising for research, so ultimately we accomplished our goal,” he said. “If you think about what we’ve achieved—our team size has quadrupled, we were all taking it more seriously and we were the top contributors out of all the schools—it’s really awesome.” Shen agreed. “Originally, our goal was to raise around $5,000, but we ended up receiving around $7,000,” she said. “That’s a really great achievement and I want everybody to be proud of their efforts.”

According to Huizing and many others, Gunn was the largest group participating in the event. “The organizers were impressed not only by our numbers and fundraising, but the positive and helpful attitude that our group brought to the event,” Huizing said. “They were definitely sorry to see us go.”

The leaders who were involved in RFL this year are working to prevent a similar incident from happening in the future. “We are still in the planning stages, but I am looking forward to participating in Relay For Life in the future,” Huizing said. “I know that the Gunn team was disappointed with not completing Relay this year and will be even more determined to make a positive impact next year.”

Though some argue that increased supervision would have prevented individuals from leaving the field, Zhou believes that the role of the chaperones was to act mainly as facilitators and not as babysitters. “The teachers and parents at the event were mainly there to guide the general direction of the team,” Zhou said. “It would have been hard for them to keep an eye on specific students and at the same time maintain a sense of control over the whole group.”

Prior to the relay, the chaperones had talked to the group about the behavior expected from the students as representatives of Gunn. “I think the only thing that wasn’t made clear was the fact that students weren’t allowed to leave the site of the relay unless they had permission, but this is usually understood,” Wu said. “The individual who was arrested was not the only person who took it as his liberty to leave the site and there were other students who left campus to get snacks and such.” Huizing agreed. “Each of the students was given the trust that is usually given to young adults at school and on field trips,” she said. “We were extremely disappointed when we discovered that some students had taken advantage of this trust, especially at a charity event.”

Though some fear that the incident will harm relations with the organizers of RFL, Shen believes that the actions of one individual will not bring down the reputation of the club. “The students’ decisions do not in any way reflect the choice of our club,” she said. “We’ve been partnering with Stanford’s Relay for Life for a really long time and I know they will continue to trust us and invite us to future events.”

Overall, Huizing believes that RFL is an excellent event for students to attend for multiple reasons. “Not only did the students get a chance to support the American Cancer Association but they were also able to listen to survivors’ stories and support them as they participated in the relay,” she said. “I was impressed by the number of students who gave up their Friday nights to participate in such a meaningful event. While we were at Relay I saw amazing teamwork from helping a friend put together a complicated tent to encouraging a stranger to complete another lap of the Relay. The event was so overwhelmingly positive and meaningful I am sad it has to be overshadowed by the poor decisions of a few students.”

Even though this year’s RFL didn’t turn out the way that participants had expected, some say that they will continue to participate in the years to come. “I’m definitely attending Relay for Life again next year just because I had so much fun at this one even though it got shut down,” freshman Cat Perez said. “It’s such a good feeling when you know you’re doing things for the benefit of others, and that’s exactly what Relay for Life is about.”

—Additional reporting by Niki Mata