Students around the school have organized to raise awareness for breast cancer awareness month in October. Cheerleading, dance team, and Relay for Life student organizations have all been showing their pink pride throughout the month.

At the home football game on Oct. 18, the cheerleading squad dressed up in full pink with pink pom-poms, pink hair bows and pink breast cancer ribbon temporary tattoos. They also set up a breast cancer awareness banner and pink balloons along the fence in front of the football game and modified some of their cheers to the breast cancer awareness theme.  Dance team wore pink hair ribbons and jerseys with pink writing on them to show their support.

“Awareness can save lives, since early diagnosis increases the chance of survival,” senior Emma Gee, a cheer co-captain, said. “Sports are very closely followed and have the most universal appeal of any activity, so they are a good way to get a message across.”

The Relay for Life organization at Jefferson has also been working throughout the month to raise awareness. Leaders have distributed pink ribbons to committee members to display while at school and set up an awareness activity called “Paint your pinky pink,” in which anyone, boy or girl, can paint their pinky nails pink in exchange for baked goods courtesy of a Relay for Life committee member.

“Every month we do a different type of cancer awareness,” junior Aleesha Toteja, Junior Event Chair of Relay for Life at Jefferson, said. “Raising awareness for cancer because one way or another everyone has been touched by cancer, and by celebrating the lives of the survivors and remembering those who have passed, we are able to come together as a society against cancer.”