Relay For Life was last night. There wasn’t much talking, hence “Sights n’ Sounds,” but Groove Theory danced to Yung Humma’s “Lemme Smang It!,” which means you missed out if you weren’t there.

Still upset about Saturday’s heartbreaking loss to Syracuse?

We here at Vox still haven’t gotten over our sadness, and now the Orangemen have added insult to injury by challenging our ability to fundraise for Relay for Life.

Georgetown Relay will be competing against Syracuse’s Relay until March 12 to see which school can raise more money.

Check out the challenge video here:

… Or should we say, sexy samples?

OK, bad joke.

In any event, that’s a slideshow of a few pages from the 2010 – 2011 ‘Men of GERMS’ Calendar, the gem of a date-keeper that the Georgetown Emergency Medical Response Service has already sold to dozens of tittering students.  The proceeds of each $10 calendar go to benefit Georgetown Relay For Life and so far, GERMS has sold a little more than half its stock, netting over $700 for Relay.

GU Relay will still gets the profits  for any calendars sold from now until GERMS runs out (Relay’s ongoing until the summer), so you can still buy one for a good cause. Then it’s up to you to figure out what kind of injury you can fake that will require a GERMS man to save you while shirtless. ‘Falling’ into the Yates swimming pool might work. Or maybe passing out during hot yoga.

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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With about a month to go before Georgetown University’s Relay For Life and over $143,6000 raised already for this year’s Relay, the annual event will probably beat last year’s take of about $402,000 when all donations are tallied at the end of the fiscal year in August.

This year’s Relay fundraising team has also pulled in more individual donations than last year and expanded its outreach to other Georgetown campuses and the surrounding neighborhood.

“We have more people doing less,” Rachael Kenney (MSB ’11), an event chair for Relay, said. “The number of donations we’re seeing is way up, but they end up being smaller, which is a national trend. This happened at a lot of other Relays last year, which most people thought was due to the economy, but it did not happen to us until this year.”

The increased outreach that Relay’s board has been doing this year to the Medical School, Law Center, and surrounding Georgetown neighborhood has helped make up for the shrinking donations, Kenney said, with many donations in particular coming from the Medical Center, where many of last year’s board members are now studying. However, it’s not clear whether Relay can surpass its fundraising goal of doubling last year’s donations.

Earlier this week, when Kenney told Vox that Relay’s goal was to double last year’s goal, she added, “at this point, I hate to tell you, I don’t think that will happen.” In a follow-up e-mail today, however, she wrote, “I take back what I said about not being able to meet our goal—the momentum that has build this week is proving that this campus can do whatever they set their minds to.”

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This year Georgetown’s Relay for Life set an extraordinarily ambitious goal for itself: raise $500,000, despite the awful economy.  So how’d they do last weekend?  Well, not quite 500 grand, but pretty damn good.

So far the event has grossed $375,000, but donations can come in until the end of the fiscal year in August, so Marketing Chair Rachael Kenney (MSB ’11) estimates this year’s event will end up raking in about $390,000

When you add this year’s numbers to the net profits from 2007 and 2008 ($287,000 and $380,000, respectively), you’ll see that this year Georgetown passed the million dollar mark.

While we’ll probably cede the title of Top Grossing event to Virginia Tech, we will probably remain the Top Netting event and Top Online Fundraising event, according to Kenney.

3,800 students participated in Relay this year, an increase of more than 400 from last year, according to logistics chair Spencer Fertig (COL ’11).

The top fundraiser for Georgetown was senior Charlotte Lowrey, who raised over $21,600.  According to Kenney, she’s on-track to be the top-fundraiser in the nation this year.