Salisbury Post.com October 29, 2011 Students shave heads to raise cancer awareness By Laurie D. Willis SALISBURY — Livingstone senior Eugene Brown has felt the effects of breast cancer up close and personal. One of his aunts is a breast cancer survivor. Another aunt lost her battle to the disease in April. So last month, Brown, of Suitland, Md., organized “Bald for the Cause,” an event during which Livingstone College students and alumni shaved their heads as a show of solidarity for breast cancer victims and survivors. He got the idea while interning on Capitol Hill over the summer but implemented it to coincide with National Breast Cancer Awareness Month, which ends Monday. “Originally it was going to be my own visual demonstration,” said Brown, a business administration major. “I was going to shave my head in honor of my two aunts. But after sharing my idea with some close friends including DeAndre Thompson and Jeremy Ratcliff, after seeing how quickly people were willing to join me and after hearing a freshman tell me he lost his mother to breast cancer when he was only 8 years old, I realized that we had to make this a school-wide event.” And so on Sept. 29, Brown and about 40 other Livingstone College students and alumni participated in “Bald for the Cause.” And while they didn’t get their heads shaved, 160 more students attended the event in front of Livingstone’s student union to lend support and read brochures about the disease. Breast cancer is expected to kill more than 39,500 women in the U.S. this year alone, according to statistics from breastcancer.org. In fact, breast cancer death rates in the U.S. are higher than any other cancer besides lung cancer, the organization says. Ann Ware, a licensed practical nurse and Livingstone College’s Director of Health Services, said she was impressed with the students for organizing “Bald for the Cause.” “I thought what the students did was wonderful,” Ware said. “I thought it was a really different idea, especially for the guys to do that. In the past most of the initiatives targeting breast cancer were spearheaded by women, but these days everybody is doing something for breast cancer. There’s a high awareness for breast cancer.” Like most diseases, breast cancer doesn’t discriminate by race, but African-American women die from breast cancer at higher rates than other women, Ware said. “Every major disease affects African-Americans more, and that’s usually because of socio-economic reasons,” Ware said. “A lot of people don’t have insurance, and a lot of people aren’t educated to go to the doctor, but African-Americans are more susceptible to most diseases.” Also, many women fail to get annual mammograms or to perform breast self-examinations, Ware said. Livingstone senior Sweetie Sherman performs monthly self exams. She also had her head shaved on Sept. 29. “I did it because when I was in high school I started having pains in my right breast,” said Sherman, who was born in Liberia but moved with her family to Charlotte at age 9. “I went to the doctor and he did a mammogram. It turns out I didn’t have breast cancer. A couple of weeks before we participated in ‘Bald for the Cause’ I started having more pains in that same breast so I did another mammogram. Thankfully, I found out a week after ‘Bald for the Cause’ that I don’t have breast cancer, but I have to go back in six months for a follow-up appointment,” she said. Earlier this month, during an assembly in Varick Auditorium, a video showed Sherman, Brown and other students getting their heads shaved. As she sat in the barber’s chair, Sherman cried. “The date we shaved our heads for breast cancer is the same date three years ago that I lost my maternal grandmother, Jangar Murphee,” Sherman said. “She was 86. She didn’t die of breast cancer, but that was still a very emotional day for me.” Sherman was the only female student to get her head shaven but shrugs off the notion that she’s brave. Her hair will grow back, but many women who undergo chemotherapy treatments to fight breast cancer eventually lose much more than their hair, she said. SANDRA M. PHOENIX Program Director HBCU Library Alliance sphoenix@hbculibraries.org<mailto:sphoenix@hbculibraries.org> www.hbculibraries.org<http://www.hbculibraries.org/> 404.592.4820 Skype:sandra.phoenix1 1438 West Peachtree Street NW Suite 200 Atlanta, GA 30309 Toll Free: 1.800.999.8558 (Lyrasis) Fax: 404.892.7879 www.lyrasis.org<http://www.lyrasis.org/> Honor the ancestors, honor the children.