If you’ve missed the enormous banners in Red Square, the countdown posters across campus, or haven’t figured out what all that purple glitter is doing in Red Square yet, tonight is Relay For Life. And with about $330,000 raised so far, the Georgetown chapter should just about match the amount it raised to fight cancer last year, $402k.

Relay probably won’t raise $500,000, nor meet the goal it set for itself of doubling last year’s take, but the amount of donations is almost 25 percent higher than last year and there are 400 more participants this year than in 2009. The American Cancer Society website RelayGU.org currently has 205 teams registered and 2,805 participants. And the Relay for Life fundraising chair, David Hammerman (MSB ’11) says that they only need to raise another $20,000 today, which he believes is “very doable,” to be even with last year’s event, which saw about $30,000 raised at the event and $20,000 after.

In light of the economic downturn, Relays at other colleges have seen a similar trend, of smaller donations from more people. Comparatively, however, Georgetown is doing extremely well and is second only to Virginia Tech, Hammerman said.

As for their “double your pleasure, double your fun” campaign to double last year’s net gain of $402,000, Hammerman explains that the campaign was more of a committee motivator. He says he’s not disappointed in Georgetown.

“Georgetown students, being so philanthropic throw their energy behind so many good causes [like Haiti and Chile relief],” he said. “While there may be less money to go around and be donated to Relay, the support from the student body has never been higher.”

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Editor’s note: Comments of the Week will run tomorrow

This week, Vox caught up with students to ask them what they thought about the demands of the Plan A Hoyas campaign.

Editor’s Note: Some of the students in the video say the gun was stolen from a Metropolitan Police Department officer.  It should be noted that the gun was actually taken from a Park Police officer.