Students’ canoe trip to fund cancer research

Megan Schiferl

Megan Schiferl

Four SDSU students will soon embark on a 75-day adventure in hopes to help promote cancer awareness.

Jeff Hughes, Tony Temple, Ben Wise and Mark York are going to take a trip down the Big Sioux River.

Zeno Wicks, adviser of the Delta Chi fraternity, frequently pushes the members to come up with new and fascinating ideas to promote the ideals the fraternity embraces.

In 2008 Wise, an agricultural education major, biked from Brookings to Las Vegas, Nev., to raise more than $5,000 for the Jimmy V Foundation, a charity for cancer research.

Taking a cue from Wise, Hughes, a business economics major, can claim credit to this current adventure that will go to the same cause.

The senior from Andover, Minn., said he has always loved the outdoors and managed to tie that love into planning a 75-day canoe trip down the Big Sioux, Missouri and Mississippi Rivers.

The group is using money from pledges to go toward cancer research. Any reservations about the difficulty of the trip were quickly put to rest.

“I’ve always said that two people can accomplish three times as much as one person; just think what we can do with four,” said York, a mathematics and agronomy major.

All four members of the trip have been closely affected by cancer within their immediate families, and through these tragedies, a drive for greater social awareness has molded this group of current and future leaders.

“This trip has been my dream for many years and I live every day full of joy, energy and passion,” said Hughes.

The students have all been active leaders on campus during their time at SDSU.

Wise, former president of Delta Chi, has since passed that role on to Hughes, the current President.

Temple, a biology pre-medicine major, has been extremely involved with Student’s Association as a senator and was a previous Delta Chi secretary.

In addition to having leadership experience in their pasts, the young men all have big plans for their future.

York plans on going to graduate school for plant breeding or computational science and Temple will be attending the University of South Dakota’s Medical School this fall.

Hughes will be returning to SDSU this fall in hopes of graduating in December while Wise plans on completing his student teaching.

The students hope to have cell phone service in case of emergency, but if not, the men are not worried. Hughes, Temple, and Wise all have extensive travel experience ranging from academic experiences abroad and personal trips to a variety of countries such as Senegal, Ecuador, Costa Rica, Brazil and Iceland.

These experiences have given them the knowledge needed to eat, sleep and breathe their anticipated adventurefilled journey. The students will be gone June 21- Aug. 11 and all the money they raise will go to the Jimmy V Foundation.